


You're Gonna Have To Serve Somebody

by wishwellingtons



Category: Thick of It (UK)
Genre: Backstory, F/M, First Time, M/M, Multi, Prequel, set in the 1990s, sex in hotels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 17:00:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/310046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishwellingtons/pseuds/wishwellingtons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the '90s, and some in the Opposition are in despair. Seconded from the Foreign Office, the ill-fated Douglas Lundy is told to help Malcolm Tucker (mensch, gravedigger, and political-genius-in-training) expand the Press & Comms team before the general election that the Opposition must win. Neither Malcolm, married to his beloved, academic wife, nor Steve Fleming (who mistakenly believes himself secure on the throne) is banking on the arrival of a young Glaswegian ex-seminarian, who really, really needs a job. Meanwhile, the good (?) people of Fisheries & Farming receive a dinner invitation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. it may be the devil or it may be the lord

**Author's Note:**

> I really fudge timelines at points during this. For Brits, the events of the election mentioned are (as is moderately obvious) May 1997, but please just pretend it happens a couple of years later. This was necessary to involve Sam, who would otherwise be too young to appear at all. Although the fic is therefore set later than 1997, other 1997 events - including the death of Diana - do happen in the proper year. I also have to thank arathesane for including Dylan's You Gotta Serve Somebody on her fanmix - from which I have stolen this fic's title and its chapters. As always, feedback is lived for. Oh, and if you don't like het, ensemble pieces, Hugh Abbott and OCs, you'd better not read this. ...and, yes, this is the WiP with Malcolm and Jamie's first time.

"...why does Kensal House look like a Gorbals outreach programme?"

"The Glorious Leader's got Malcolm hiring. Well, Blondie and Malcolm." Glenn shrugged. "Under the strict supervision of Fleming, one assumes. Not enough gravediggers in the political graveyard."

"Oh, Christ. So he's shipped in another truckload of knuckle-dragging cokeheads, and is separating the men from the Mars bars?"

"Probably divides them into two teams and tells them to fight. Blondie's got a sedan-chair's-worth of former classmates - "

" - clientele, you mean," said Josef, bitchily.

" - Douglas is _not_ a rentboy, Murdoch. He absolutely isn't. Anyway, he's trying to balance out the Trots with the good ol' boys of the Bullingdon, in a desperate attempt to stop the Glorious Leader making this next election even more unwinnable."

In a rare moment of loyalty, Josef found himself actually defending his own Party. "Good God, Cullen, it's not --"

" -- it bloody is. Those Government bastards could float a plastic hat as their candidate,"

" -- which in a very real sense, they already have, Christ's _sake_ why is this fucking floppy so useless? I fucking hate email. I liked it when they used to bring me my post on a spike."

Glenn patted Hugh's shoulder in a consoling way, and caught Josef's vicious, ginger little face mocking him across the grim grey tower of Shadow Fisheries and Farming's new computer. "How're the children, Josef?" he asked, with more than customary asperity.

"Oh, attractive but dim, like their pa _pa_. Glenda's taking them to... somewhere South American, to learn about rape. Or possibly it's Africa. Robyn's editing her school newspaper, now."

"I thought you didn't send them to school. Thought that was against Glenda's feminist beliefs."

"You'll all be sorry when I'm dead."

"Retired."

Josef looked mournful. "Is there a difference?"

Hugh glanced up, suddenly stricken. "Oh fuck, I've remembered. What you said made me remember."

The older man blinked. "What, "retired"?"

"No, "dead". The Macbeths have invited me to one of their dinner parties. Presumably as the human sacrifice." He gazed at Glenn. "Do you think they're going to use me in some sort of horrific ritual?"

"Almost definitely. Or Mary'll slit you open with her eternity ring and use your vital organs as props in an -  even more - fucking "audacious and terrifying" depiction of the economic problem."

"Oh, bollocks." Hugh banged his head on the desk. "I had a Scottish nanny and I quite like _porridge_ , but, fuck me, I hate the Scots. They're all seething balls of fury wrapped around six stone of raging emphysema."

"They're also up and coming," said Glenn, meditatively, tapping his tortoiseshell specs, against his chin. "Which makes it all the odder that they should have asked _you_."

\----

Douglas Bartholomew Lundy (Douglas B. Lundy, and thus 'Blondie') was born in Belgravia, the second of three sons produced by Major Kenneth Lundy and his wife Elizabeth Vita. After pre- and prep school in Notting Hill Gate, Douglas attended  St. Paul's as a day boy (like his brothers); his sister Elspeth, meanwhile, went to the North London Collegiate, where she learned to talk like a Jewish Princess, but always to dress like her mother. After Cambridge (where he got the nickname), Douglas went to work for New Labour, much to the astonishment (but not displeasure) of his parents. Originally in the FCO, his quiet charm had lead to several secondments: he had now been tasked by his boss, Steve Fleming, with expanding the Press & Communications team ahead of the election.

Douglas was at an age, and of a class, where remaining unmarried brought him less displeasure and inconvenience than following, more visibly, his own inclinations toward a certain lifestyle. This is not irrelevant to that which follows.

He was interviewing candidates in a room about as shiny and overlit as New Labour itself. Obviously, it was an exciting time to be alive, but Douglas wondered why everything had to look so glossy. He was starting to hear _Things Can Only Get Better_ even in his sleep.

The man beside him was not exactly one for glossiness. Malcolm'd just come back from a piss (maximised caffeine - evidently he wasn't getting enough sleep; Douglas had heard on the grapevine that they were trying for a baby), and was almost ready to continue. So far, he'd conducted the recruitment process in the manner of a police lineup.

Now he was on the phone. Throughout the day, Douglas had seen Malcolm's body language range from savagely balletic to a sort of crab-like fury (Douglas was observant, but he had more reason for noticing Malcolm than most).

 

Now, Tucker's posture was set to 'genially expansive', charisma flaring out of him, voice relishing every word. And it wasn't even because he was bollocking someone: thus, it had to be his wife. Malcolm flashed Douglas a look that - while not an apology for the delay - indicated a willingness to keep things on an even keel, combined with a general desire to remind Douglas of his infinite unimportance in the grand scheme of things. If Malcolm ever genuinely smiled, it was because he was speaking to his wife.

He hung up, gave Douglas a shit-eating grin, and slid gracefully into his seat. "All right, Blondie, let's get used to eating our young."  He looked pleased with himself. Douglas would be glad when this secondment was over.

Malcolm managed to interview the next five people in just under seven minutes. Two of them barely made it through the door. After a brief argument with Douglas, the fifth candidate (singularly, insufferably boring) merited twenty minutes of toe-curling agony while Malcolm propped his eyes open and asked slow, semi-conscious questions purely out of spite. Douglas shot him a furious look at the end of this, and demanded _he_ lead the interview next time.

Returning to his phone, Malcolm let Douglas flick through the next three walking nightmares without comment, but glanced up at the arrival of the fourth. This young man, Douglas had spotted in the corridor and privately dismissed as the most arrant of failures; he looked like he was in school uniform, and his suit jacket didn't match his trousers. His shoes were clean, but he needed to cut his hair.

Douglas was embarassed when the boy began to speak in a Scottish accent several shades thicker even than Malcolm's. This could prompt one of Malcolm's embarassing fits of nationalism - New Labour's Press dept. was already full of ginger adolescents with the Gorbals stuck in their teeth - or, equally disastrously, a fit of political cannibalism. You could never tell how a reference to Scotland would take him.

Initially, it seemed harmless enough. When the boy opened his mouth, Malcolm did a double-take, then looked suddenly confused. He kept his focus on Macdonald all through the latter's rambling explanation of his O Levels, A Levels and prospects at a seminary (a _seminary_? Douglas was reminded of all those Renaissance papal nephews), but after initial introductionsn, Douglas would have sworn Malcolm was not _listening_ to the juvenile, but looking at his face.

Privately unnerved, Douglas started planning questions that would conclude the interview as soon as possible, but the moment Macdonald finished, Malcolm leant forward and began a frankly incomprehensible interrogation of  Macdonald's attendance at Pontypavill First School, and an apparently theological reference to Holy Family. At this, Macdonald - who, Douglas was more and more convinced, had arrived wearing his school tie - gave an inexplicable and frankly startling smile. His eyes were very blue and he had, it seemed, escaped the acne which had so blighted Lundy's own adolescence (until he began stealing his sister's skincare).

"Aye," grinned Macdonald. "I was in Father Benson's class. Star pupil."

"Jesus Christ." For some reason, this intelligence seemed to make Malcolm triumphant. "Which estate?"

"Keir Hardie. But we moved to Motherwell."

"Aye, 'a gathered." Malcolm nodded towards the tie. His eyes, Douglas noticed, had taken on the glint more usually associated with peregrine falcons and a juicy bit of mouse. Malcolm stretched. 'So, Jamie, what will you do if you don't get this job?"

The response was prompt. "Marry ma girlfriend an' probably turn car thief. I wis gonnae be a priest, but - " he looked like a fuckin' ingratiating version of those bush babies Malcolm'd watched in documentaries, he'd be fuckin' _perfect_ for lying to the press, " - then I met someone." This, Douglas thought worriedly, was like nothing so much as the Artful Dodger and Fagin.

Malcolm grinned. "And if I do employ you?"

"Marry her and buy a house in London."

Douglas raised his eyebrows. "Mr Macdonald, the Government of Great Britain is hardly a matrimonial - "

"Pipe down, Blondie." Malcolm fixed his eyes on Jamie again. "Is she pregnant, son?"

Jamie had the grace to look embarassed. "Aye," he admitted. "We cannae wait too much longer. Her name's Claire. She was a St Ursula's girl."

"Right." Malcolm got up, started collecting his things. "Listen, I have to go shit on some papers in the name of progressive politics, but come for dinner tonight."

The younger man shifted. "I cannae, I've got to go back, the job club only gave us wor train fare."

"Where've you been staying? The YMCA? Jesus. All right. You need some clothes for Monday."

"Monday?" A total lack of comprehension flickered over the young man's face for a second, turning suddenly to illuminated delight. "Oh! Oh, thank you, Mr Tucker - Mr, Mr Blondin, thank you, this is f - this is bloody _brilliant_." Douglas and Malcolm were each in receipt of several violent handshakes in rapid succession. Each was so firm as to cause bruising, but Malcolm didn't seem to mind. He grinned at Macdonald, very briefly, then restrained his more effusive demonstrations.

"That's all right, son. Do you know where you want to live, when the wee yin is born?"

"No," admitted Jamie cheerfully, starting to trail after Malcolm with an expression of rapt devotion on his features. Douglas had read some science fiction in his youth, and he feared the term might be 'imprinting'. Or perhaps Jamie just had 'brain-damaged spaniel' somewhere in his family tree. He shuddered, delicately, but Jamie was still talking. "I don't know anything about London, really - mind, I don't want you to think I'm soft on politics." His tone became strident. "I want to fuck the Tories, right, with the best of them. Shit, this is amazing, I can book the church. Fr O'Malley'll be fuckin' ecstat - sorry, do you mind me swearing?"

"Douglas," Malcolm said, stopping suddenly, "Can you no' find this boy somewhere to live? I dinnae need _details_ , man," he scowled, as Douglas offered protest, "He's got a bairn coming. And a wee girl. Convent girl. Douglas, move, she was at St. Ursula's, man."

"I don't know what that _is_ ," Blondie muttered, but Malcolm was away again, listening to Jamie talk.

"No, not our estate. Her da was a union man. No idea why she's marrying me - well, I biffed Jimmy Toole for her in the fifth form, but I cannae ascribe it all to that - _shit_ , are those the steps you see on the news?"

" _Why are we hiring him_?" Douglas demanded, catching up with Malcolm and hissing in his ear.

Malcolm gave him what could, at best, be called an enigmatic smile. The smile that, as always, meant Malcolm would give him _nothing_. Defeated, Douglas sank back. Malcolm grinned. "Coming tonight? Aye? Bring a bottle, then. Not that fuckin' chardonnay. You eat shellfish, don't you?"

"Yes - wait, Malcolm. My step-cousin wants me for a drink beforehand."

"Which one? Is this the terrifying fascist godsquad? Jesus-botherers and shirts wi' no collar?"

"No, not the fascists," replied Douglas, blandly. "My mother's lot. Well, the lot who brought her up after my grandfather lost the title, and, er, in other words - "

" - the financially vicious fat cats descended from the famous dyke."

"Yes," sighed Douglas. "The Nicholsons. Hedge funders."

Malcolm's features relaxed into a gaunt, but beatific smile. Behind his shoulder, Douglas could see Macdonald already looking restive. "Bald fucker? Mary knows him. Bring him along."


	2. you may be somebody's mistress, you may be somebody's heir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's months before the '97 Election, and the ill-fated Douglas Lundy brings his well-connected cousin to dinner with the Scottish power couple people call the Macbeths'. Hugh Abbot breaks a commandment, while Jamie Macdonald, lieutenant and miniature psycho, brings a child-bride Catholic carnival to Westminster. As his political star rises, Malcolm is fighting desperately to keep his house in order, while preparing for the election that will decide his career. Through the spring of '97, an American hack, a cokehead and three salacious MPs will all force him to starling conclusions about his own marriage - and his long-term intentions towards Jamie. Throughout it all, Julius, Oxonian and diarist, reflects (and suffers a loss of his own).

"Glenn. I've just fucking left the Macbeths. Jesus Christ, that was horrific. They're living in some enormous white _box_ , everything's shiny and they don't seem to have any cupboards. Or sofas. I expect it's all out back with the fucking torture instruments. Every three hundred feet or so there's an ornament which probably cost the same as my first house. Christ. No, of _course_ he was there. He _cooked_. Jesus, it's fucking unnerving when Malcolm's nice. I have to say - I have to hand it to you, I know I got a little bit shirty before, when you said - yeah, I mean there _was_ absolutely _no reason_ for me to be there. I was four hundred years older than everyone else in the room.

"Maybe they're all still there laughing about what a cock I am. At dinner - at dinner, which, by the way, was excellent, I'm expecting the cyannide to kick in any second, wait, no, which one's almonds - arsenic - I was seated between _Julius Nicholson_ \- that cockhead hedge funder from the city, enormous hands. Yes, you do know, he's the one who stood next to Golden Boy at the Bosnia premiere thing, and Steve Fleming said 'What an enormous poof' really loudly. Hm? No. Blondie, they're cousins, and yes, he really is an enormous poof. Anyway, Julius Nicholson on my left, and on my right, MARY. Lady Macbeth herself. Yes! I know! ...well I was too fucking terrified to say ANYTHING, really. Malcolm slits the throats of anyone who looks at her, and she's written about four hundred fucking books, so honestly I was just a bit.... oh, charming. Well, stunning, actually and whenever a woman's that attractive I've never known what to say to her. Legs. God knows how Malcolm ended up with someone like her. Well she is, but - Edinburgh, I think, and, come off it, wasn't her father a Earl or a Laird or something? Anyway, she knows Nicholson, it seems fucking unlikely she was raised by whatever slavering wolfpack brought up Malcolm - hmm? Oh, Blondie, Salman Rushdie, fucking Nicholson - honestly, I wonder if the man shits diamonds - that bloody awful comedian everyone likes - Malcolm actually seemed _relaxed_ , it was horrifying. What? Well, she didn't look pregnant to me, God's sake, Glenn, isn't that a bit prurient?

"Anyway, Christ, I didn't wake you, did I? I didn't want to call the house in case Peter - oh? Good. Well - ha ha, not great actually, Kate's pissed off with me for 'ogling Mary's legs', apparently. Which is - if Irene calls, can you tell her I'm sleeping on your sofa? I'm sorry. I know. I know. I absolutely I _am_ a shit. I know, but - thanks, mate, thanks. You're a pal."

\----

"Malcolm, such a _welcome_ meeting, after so long."  Julius presses his large hand to Malcolm's, with just the slightest suggestion of twitching back a cuff. Douglas, who has aged considerably during the evening, gives Tucker a stricken look over his taller cousin's shoulder. Julius is, Malcolm decides, rather like a large, sleek cat dressed in pinstripes, or one of those plush teddy bears wee lassies have, and whose round bodies they button into clothes. He is tall, balding and self-satisfied.

Julius has had three helpings of pudding and looks marvellously content with the world. Malcolm gives him a razor-edge smile (he's marked Julius down as a possible donor to the Party - he might be useful after the election, though, with all his guff, must at all fuckin' costs, keep away from politics).

"Julius," he says, infusing his smile's edge and his voice's pitch with just enough of the deadly charm he rations for such emergencies. He is unaware, perhaps, of its _particular_ impact.

Old Bendyfuck (as Malcolm has privately christened him) now turns to Malcolm's wife (who has had her eyes on her husband until a moment before; her face, as ever, is well-bred content, but Malcolm gets a tiny shot of despair that he might have done something wrong) and, reaching confidently for both hands, kisses her on each cheek. She smiles, genuinely this time, and he gives her a serious, fussy look, and sounds earnest.

"Mary, my darling. Good to see you looking so _well_ , and you will _consider_ that which we discussed?" Mary, expression slightly strained, concedes this, and folds herself into her jacket to see the two men outside. When she gets back, Malcolm is standing in the living room, a teatowel and a wineglass in his hands.

"What does he want you to consider?"

"Julius?"

"Aye, that balding bumbag." He's had a bit to drink, or he'd never speak to her like this. He usually doesn't touch a drop at their dinner parties, but for some reason, tonight was an exception.

"Nothing, Malcolm. I'm going to have a bath."

\----  
 _  
_[...] _but on the whole, a most enjoyable evening. Malcolm's quite brutal remarks on the subject of Steven (though always couched in sufficient irony as to seem_ almost _jests_ ) _will stay with me. But I shall be glad not to see him again too soon - he is, perhaps, too_

Julius paused over the appropriate word. None seemed just.As a diarist, Julius rarely blotted a line.

 _disturbing as a dinner companion._

 __Julius blushed. That wasn't what he meant to say at all. However, it was better than the alternatives.

Julius was just about to turn in (checked pyjamas, Hobnob, shipping forecast) when the 'phone rang. He was slightly alarmed to hear his cousin's voice.

"Douglas?" Julius was the only member of his family never to use Douglas's nickname. But he was hardly likely to - a man with his personal scarcity was hardly likely to mock the abundant blond locks of another. Brow furrowing, Julius reached again for his glasses (he never liked to conduct important discussions without them, _so_ often in a crisis it was necessary to _write things down_ , and his myopia could be hardly be _trusted_ ). "Is Aunty Elizabeth - "

"What? No, Julius, Mum's fine. Listen - I meant to ask you after the party, but the taxi arrived so fast I didn't like to." Julius hears his cousin pause. He remembers Douglas as a little boy, littler than his (always tall, usually solid) cousin. He is dear to Julius, and always has been.

"I'm all ears, Douglas."

 _Ears and dome_ , thinks Douglas, treacherously. "When you and Malcolm were conspiring in the kitchen -- "

Julius lets forth a series of coughs, scoffs, and verbal perspiration so incriminating that Douglas simply _despairs_. So that's the way the wind is blowing. He resigns himself to a burst of his cousin's prize piffle. " _Hardly_ , Douglas - my dear chap - Mary - I was admiring his collection of - " Julius hears his cousin's eyebrows rising to the sound of " . . . " and blushes, " - soup bowls."

Considering Tucker's well known, terrifying culinary skills (unsurprising, Douglas fulminates, that Malcolm should be good at anything with _knives_ ), that is almost plausible.

"Well," Douglas exhales, deciding to pretend the past minute never happened, "during that doubtless riveting conversation, did Tucker mention a young man named Macdonald?"

"Macdonald."

"James Macdonald." Douglas feels unaccountably silly. "New bug."

"Ah. No, I don't - we really did stick to food, conversationally." This, Douglas can well believe. "And the forthcoming election, of course." He hears a certain pomposity creep into his cousin's voice - the pomposity he remembers from when Julius was Head Boy, and Lundy the new bug. "Something causing you _concern_?" He peers a little, into the phone. "Nothing regrettable, I hope."

"No. Just -- " what _was_ it about Julius, shiny head and fussy spectacles, that had always made Douglas confess to him? The man (yet another eccentricity) was, after all, an avowed non-believer (Douglas still had his doubts). "Just -- I can't help but feel -- "

Julius smiles, a little sadly. To Douglas had fallen the family's share of good looks, confidence, and amatory success. To Julius had been alloted the gift of words - and, perhaps also, that of interpreting silence. It would be wrong to deny he took a certain pleasure in the task.

"When does your secondment end?"

"Friday. And - Julius - I haven't told Mum or Dad yet, but I've accepted a position in Washington. With the embassy."

"Ah." For a second Julius is so quiet, Douglas wonders if he's hung up; he finds himself even listening for the click. "My warmest congratulations," comes the eventual reply, more smoothly. "I'll keep a weather eye on them, don't worry, dear boy. After all, I shall be very often in Westminster."

"Thank you, Julius."

"And - my dear boy - the very best of luck."

"Don't be silly, Julius," his cousin replies, feeling unaccountably alarmed, "I'll see you before I go, surely?"

"Of course," says Julius, but he hangs up too quickly. Work frequently takes him to Europe and America, but at the thought of Douglas being permanently abroad... sitting on his perfectly-made bed, amongst the well-chosen art and the photographs from past days, Julius feels horribly upset.

\----

  
Jamie's wedding is a fuckin' nightmare. Malcolm rashly agreed to go on the stag night - the miniature psycho looked so horrifically disappointed when Malcolm'd he wouldnae - and spent it trying to stop Jamie from choking on his tongue. Jamie has several thousand half-brothers, cousins and satellites, all of whom adore him, and none of whom can afford a drink. Through barely-understood motives, Malcolm bankrolls the whole thing, stays for hours, then crawls home after a deeply disturbing encounter with the prospective groom, who rambles into his shoulder about what a 'fuckin' legend, boss' he is, then grows emotional to the point of incoherence. Malcolm ascertains that the terrifying relatives don't intend to ship him to fuckin' Calais or _drown_ him before the wedding, then falls into bed fully clothed.

He wakes up the next day feeling four hundred years old, then shudders through the longest display of Catholicism, Glaswegian madness and _poverty_ he's had to endure in years. Claire looks so young and so pregnant it's indecent. Jamie looks so clueless, proud and stupid that Malcolm wants to stop him. The encircling priests, nuns and friars who've turned up to cheer on the child-cult make the whole thing resemble one of Malcolm's worst nightmares.

Mary behaves impeccably. She even _takes_ to Claire, and shares - with Julius, Malcolm reflects, disconcerted - the ability to observe religious ritual (even that she was nominally raised in) with cool, companionable indifference. To her, and to her astonishing mind, the spectacle of Jamie in a cheap suit, and Claire with her outsize bouquet are anthropological phenomena. Her throat isn't tight and her stomach doesn't lurch. When they are among the _very_ few to stay seated at communion, Mary's secretive smile shows she shares _none_ of his shame.

He loves her for that, of _course_ he does. But he's glad to be out of there, and out of the reception -- away from the _fascinated_ Weegies who know his accent and his reputation; away, too, from the Macdonalds' gratitude (including that of Jamie's pretty mother, not yet forty). Away, _of course_ , from Jamie and his exuberant, besotted, unstomachable pride; but also from Mary's implied superiority, and that of the knot of cretins who've inexplicably turned up from Downing Street, Anglo-atheists to a fault.

Malcolm wants to escape them all. Not for the first time, he doesn't know which group he belongs to.

\----

"Jesus Christ, look at that."

Malcolm is in his office, with the door ajar, preparing to slam the phone down on Mary's benighted answering machine (he just wanted to bitch at her about Fleming - the moustachio'd fuck's fucked off somewhere with the fucking _statistics_ and Malcolm needs them back before the cretinous cuntwipe mistakes them for bog roll). Something in Gibson's tone (and he'd know Gibson - Anglo-American wankstain on the fringes of that fucking _Observer_ clique Mary's so fucking fond of - Anthony Gibson's the only one who doesn't have a first name that sounds like a surname or a fucking oilfield - he'd know him anywhere) makes him pause, silently replacing the receiver and pushing back his chair to listen.

A second voice laughs. "What is he, Tucker's new messenger boy? The Lords must be fucking thrilled. A little povvo ride to brighten up the House. When we get there."

Malcolm's not quite sure. Ogilvy, or Andrews. The fucking Trustafarian Charterhouse clique all sound the same, at thirty or fifty. He holds himself still, but to his disappointment it's Gibson again.

"I've heard he's actually a fucking _docker_."

The second voice laughs, then blows its nose. Andrews, then, he's the cokehead. Malcolm's shadow moves unstoppably along the wall. If Malcolm's corporeal body goes with it, it makes no sound. He hears Andrews make several lurid suggestions about what he'd like to _do_ to Macdonald, should the opportunity arise. Gibson, smirking, makes the sardonic point that you'd be in danger of _catching_ something from the docker - fleas, at the very least. Finally, Malcolm lets them wind themselves tight into the coils of jokes on 'diversity', and joins them on the landing just as Gibson's impersonating a Glasgow accent.

Malcolm guides them into his office for a fifteen-minute discussion which is only a discussion in that Malcolm shouts enough for three men. Gibson and Andrews' lasting impression is one of spittle-flecked fear. When Malcolm has offered them the chance to reproduce their views from the comfort of a Tory safe seat (which they decline), he introduces them to his very good friend, the Labour Whips. Malcolm has for the Whips the kind of respect that Jack The Ripper had for surgeons.

What unnerves Malcolm deeply is that he knew they were talking about Jamie. Without seeing him. Which is unusual - he's been spending a lot of time, lately, watching Jamie.

  
\----  
 _  
Two months later_

Jamie is standing by the coffee machine with not one, but three MPs. One is a smug cunt who, if Malcolm's inexplicable but effective spot of surveillance serves him well, plays for the 5-aside team to which Jamie - the shortest, fastest, bloodiest player since the Vikings' relegation from Euro 996 - enthusiastically belongs. The way he's looking at Jamie probably means that the smug cunt (smug _English_ cunt) has been spending far too long in the locker room for the safety of his once-strident sexuality. As for the other two, Malcolm's got the fucking polaroids of Craig Kinley, and while Jonathan Kiefert's never _publically_ put his hand on another man's cock, that august fucking windbag, that skidmark he's sporting in lieu of a fucking smile suggests he's had more than enough fucking thoughts.

Kiefert, Kinley, and that absolute twat, Isaac Mortimer (Malcolm's found the name. Big, brick shithouse guy. Midfield, mid-fucking-fuck). Between them, forty-five years as elected representatives of the people. Jamie's managed to put on a shirt and tie that don't make him look like the youngest evictee from Borstal, and - waving his mug of death's piss - is holding court like some illustration from a book of Parliamentary pre-porn. He looks like the first outlines of an etching by _Boccaccio_ , one which (if the public-school chinless deathbags play their cards right) probably ends with the diminutive Press Sec. in a spitroast with three blue-blood nonces.

Jamie is clearly being charming (which means he's also being vindictive, but the glazed look on the MPs' respectively porcine, bovine and simian faces say they just haven't noticed), laughing up at them with blue eyes, suggesting he's neither unaccustomed to playing off three MPs at once, nor particularly worried about the consequences of doing so.

The little smiling bastard looks so confident that Malcolm wants to walk over there and garotte him.

The little smiling bastard looks so confident that Malcolm wants to suck him off.

In imagination, he's already over there, hands on Jamie's chest, shoving him back against the bookcase and enjoying one delicious moment of the other man's breath before he's on his knees and undoing Jamie's belt. In this fantasy, the MPs are quite specifically absent or dead. Malcolm can imagine it all; Jamie's body, collapsing back against the bookcase, Jamie's voice while he's dropping to his knees ( _dropping to his knees_ , the phrase keeps going to his head and if _that_ has anything to do with his enormous and instantaneous hardon, Malcolm will be requesting a transfer to Her Majesty's Government in whichever fucking colony the Sassenachs still have that's boring, dusty and cold). And then, while he's got him in his mouth, Jamie's hands on him, in his hair, his voice, Jamie's _taste_ , the _weight_ of him against Malcolm's tongue --

Malcolm stops himself. He breathes as if he's been running, but his whole body is frozen in horror.

Not at work; never at work. It's unthinkable. This is the whole point on which he has based his emotional life, to date (in a minute, he'll consciously remember Mary - for now, he involuntarily twists the ring on his wedding finger).

He risks another glance at Jamie, now lighting up in an approximation of post-coital satisfaction. Watching him, Malcolm's previous heat, his anger, even his jealousy-cum-pity for the poor sad fuck grinning across at Jamie like he has any hopes of winning (Kiefert and Kinley have drifted away; evidently, Jamie likes them young and fucking stupid, which is unsurprising), have gone. Malcolm's wondering whether he's got to have Jamie, or have him sacked.

For a minute, he finds he can't tell. Then Jamie laughs, bellows something across the courtyard at his _next_ victim; in leaving, touches the dupe's arm with his nicotine-stained hand, and Malcolm knows.

He's going to have Jamie.

Malcolm's phone rings. He can't remember why it should, and then - shit, 3.40. The fuckin' counsellor.

Jamie walks off across the courtyard, and Malcolm feels sick to his stomach. The little bastard's a married man as well.

He thinks of Clare and the weans, tiny ivory-faced Madonna and child, Jamie all the time trumpeting his status as husband, father, fuckin' breadwinner Gorbals Mickey shit. Shagging men in the office.

At last, Malcolm feels a _rational_ stab of hatred: if this gets out, he'd have to sack Jamie and that'd be incredibly fucking inconvenient. This thought (of how _annoyed_ he is) manages to bring some balance as he hurries down the stairs (leaving a quick message for his PA that the lazy cow will probably never get - fuck, he needs to retire Margaret, double-time) and drops into the waiting car. This balance postpones the question of when, exactly, the diminutive psychotic smug impossible bastard (but he's _not_ impossible, begins the treacherous little voice in Malcolm's - somewhere, it fucking well can't be his _brain_ \- he does what you say. You almost trust him) became the object of impossible fantasies.

Doesn't matter. Not impossible. He's going to _have_ Jamie.

There's a weird sort of relief to it. Pull of the inevitable. Why he's always - on some sick, strange level - found listening to the bugger's maelstrom of fury and chaos relaxing. After they win the election, Jamie'll still be there, when you get down to it, and quite possibly the same cannot be said of Malcolm's wife.

For the second time that day, he catches himself in a thought and is horrified.

Malcolm tells himself to hang on until he sees _her,_ because one glimpse of his wife - as always - will bring him to his senses. His wife. She's waiting for him outside the building, tall, impeccably groomed, green coat, heels, and her beautiful dark hair. He's never going to see her without his heart turning over.

She doesn't see him or the car, but that doesn't matter because he gets to say 'Mary,' and once again thrill to the possession of just saying her name. She looks irritated at first, but her expression changes to one of concern as she drops back a couple of steps, puts her hand on his forehead.

"You're burning up. Are you well enough for this?"

"I'm fine," he says, but his voice sounds like it'll betray him. "I'm just glad to see you."

She gives him a wary look, then heads up the steps - he follows her as if she's a mirage in the desert.

 

They go in for another session, yet again not life-changing, and which fucking annoys him because they are both _so_ much cleverer than the shithead they're paying to sit opposite. Certainly, the lentil-eating, box-ticking _cunt_ (Malcolm fucking hates that he makes notes - he _doesn't understand_ why it doesn't terrify Mary that some stranger in a polo-neck is _writing things down about them_ , things they cannot _control_ ) is not fucking clever enough to tell Malcolm exactly what it is he's meant to do, or meant to be, to please her.

Because he'd be it; he'd be anything to make her stay. Jamie's just an irrelevance when Mary sits beside him, cool and clean and so fucking beautiful. Honestly, the memory that she once married him is enough to make everything bearable.

Malcolm endures analysis as an exercise in deflecting questions about his childhood without really moving his (colourless) lips. He agrees to anything Mary asks for, ceding ground by the mile, which works well for immediately disarming your political enemies but is a fucking poor strategy for reclaiming your wife. He finds it obscurely unfair that, apparently, _nothing_ will please her. It's fucking ironic that people call them the Macbeths (Malcolm knows but Mary doesn't. She wouldn't like it); all _that_ puir bastard had to do was off a king.

The thing is that the session only lasts an hour and Malcolm can't keep up his temper, and turning your phone off is no good at all when you're still minutely conscious of all the calls you're missing. Outside, Mary asks him if he has to rush off - Malcolm reminds her he has to win an election; Mary gives him that Sphinx-like smile and says of course; Malcolm reminds her he cleared his fucking diary to sit in that fucking coffee bar with her, then one of her students had to go to Casualty. Mary says enjoy Cabinet, Malcolm says enjoy fiscal fucking policy, and just when he gets to the corner (he'll fucking _walk_ ), Mary stands in the middle of the pavement and cries, with less self-control than he's ever seen in her, do you realise this is the longest fucking conversation we've had in two weeks?

His job had been one of the few things she'd fucking liked about him - well, one of the few things she _said_ she liked that Malcolm was able to believe.

Not all the sessions are this bad. Some turn into fucking glorious arguments, played out like Petruchio and Kate while the whipcrack of their fury leaves rice-eating box-ticker behind. She talks fast and funnily and they (as ever) need no audience when they're amusing each other, hitting lower and lower so it stops being about their careers and starts being really fucking funny again. More than once they've ended the session by shagging in his car. Nonetheless, when that's done, and she's shivering in his lap, ivory and jet and somehow more remote from him than ever, he's still fucking sixty hours away from the weekend; and neither of them can give an inch. She buttons up her blouse and only he would spot the sheen on her brow. He cannot remember when they last made love at home (their glossy white home, furnished with taste and care and the amazing efficacy of metric fucktonnes of new money - it's better suited as a stage than a lovenest, even Malcolm must concede).

They have, of course, both offered to give up their jobs. Repeatedly. But neither's forced the other's hand, because at this stage they still like each other. But nobody's made the offer lately.

On the pavement outside the counsellor's, she walks back up and kisses his cheek, which is an effort of will on her part because she hates even the thought of being long-lensed. Malcolm gives her an uneasy little smile that's almost gratitude, and ducks away.

\----

Julius Nicholson sends Mary a fucking fruit box, saying thank you for dinner; and for several dinners like it, through the spring and early summer that precede the election. Malcolm mistrusts the poncy fucker - so his (Edinburgh-accented, well-dressed) City contacts tell him, the poncy cunt exists entirely on Walnut Whip, Cadbury's biscuits and the spring programme at _Glyndebourne_. Supplemented by the kind of bumlickers' nursery food served up at White's.

Douglas writes or emails from Washington, twice a week. Julius knows it is probably better for Douglas to be a long way from their family. He has, after all, always wanted to walk with a larger tether. He commiserates with his Aunt Elizabeth. They reminisce about Douglas's boyhood, and his Masters year at Oxford (just overlapping with Julius and Mary). Julius smiles sickily through his Aunt's half-hopeful anxieties that 'some American woman' will snaffle her precious, still-unmarried son. Julius walks home up Kensington Church Street and tries not to miss Douglas too desperately.

Perhaps inevitably, perhaps as a distraction (and always concealed from his diary) Julius Nicholson is having private, _exquisite_ fantasies about the whip-thin, pale-eyed man his college sister has married. He noticed Malcolm's hands, and the delicate cast of his shoulders, neck, and hair. Despite Malcolm's obvious _animosity_ (which Julius must expect, as a _class interloper_ ), he values - and is fascinated by - the man's evident _intellect_.

He is awfully sorry about how the marriage's turned out.


	3. drugs at your command, women in a cage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malcolm Tucker's political star is rising as he fights to save his marriage from collapse.
> 
> Circumstances, however - including ex-seminarian, Glasgow psycho and pugilist Jamie Macdonald - continue to conspire against him. In this chapter, the British public exercise their democratic freedoms, Mary makes a decision, and Jamie Macdonald makes a one-point plan. With Hugh receiving some awkward news, it's left to Julius to maintain the voice of sanity - even when his college sister drops a bomb worse than anything Douglas might be doing in Washington.
> 
> But even after Malcolm's lead the party to (Steve Fleming's) victory, there's still room for disaster - just ask Fleming himself.
> 
> Warnings for the abuse of cocaine and of hotel fittings.

Claire Macdonald gives birth to a premature girl eight weeks after her wedding. She's pregnant again soon after.

Malcolm Tucker continues to experience vivid waking fantasies about Claire Macdonald's husband.

Douglas settles in well to D.C. life. A generous columnist links him repeatedly with the pearls-and-purses daughter of a Senator. Even a week before the election, Malcolm finds time to 'phone Julius for a verbal flaying as to what his cunting cousin Blondie means by fucking an Independent. Especially a fucking _female_ one.

Hugh Abbot's mistress begins to get pushy about a divorce. Observing the Cullens, it's something Hugh's keen to avoid. He is, after all, fond of Irene - and it's nobody's fault if someone can't give you any children.

For Malcolm and Mary, the last good time is when they win the election, a great night. Mary is photographed at Party HQ, and all the colours are the same as when reality matched the illusion; they're every inch the power couple, and  fucking beautiful.

Fleming is odious and smug and full of himself (he puts his arm round Mary, and Malcolm nearly snaps beyond constraint), making the perennially stupid, obvious remark that Mary Tucker is taller than her husband. Mary's effortless, fuckin' _effortless_ composure reminds Malcolm not to give a shit: he stays razor-sharp with triumph and the knowledge he'll be in Steve's job in a fortnight. The new Prime Minister is photogenic and clever, but too cunning to be really careful: Malcolm can see he's drunk on power already. He'll cause Malcolm no problems, so long as his _fucking wife_ stays out of the papers.

Malcolm hardly sees Jamie at all before the final result's announced: Fleming's got him running around somewhere (sudden spike of panic - has the cretinous, dollop-faced shitbag _noticed_ and tried to separate them?), and then when the landslide becomes obvious, Claire (jesus, could she be any fuckin' prettier? What the _hell_ is she doing with Jamie?) turns up. Pregnant again (Maggie, Malcolm's goddaughter, is five months old), in a red dress identical to Mary's. She's starting to show. 1 This breeds disaster - the press of course want snaps of the two of them (Mary is such a press rarity). Mary, predictably, has always _liked_ Claire (Malcolm's never known her take to a woman) and her husband suspects that a framed copy of his wife and Jamie's wife will be waiting for him in hell. Inevitably, the arrival of Claire sees Jamie's return, looking like he's just come off the football terraces, and with a red rosette pinned askew to his chest. His shirt's damp with champagne, his tie is several inches off course, and through the flush to his face that seems to be euphoria, as far as Malcolm's concerned, he's emitting neat pheremones.

Malcolm gets himself to within three feet of the New Prime Minister for the moment he's announced as such.

Others who knew the score might be surprised, given the imminent, ultimate collapse of Malcolm's personal existence, at the bolt of ecstasy and adrenaline that goes through him when it's confirmed that he (and the Labour Party of Great Britain and Norn Ireland) have _fucked_ the Tories to death, _fucked_ the Lib Dems, then suspended them all from a hotel room ceiling with gimp masks on their heads, and a Dyson nozzle up each of their bottoms. The pressbulbs flash, the cameras keep rolling, and Malcolm cannot keep the savage joy from his face. Like every other fucker on that stage, he is temporarily bathed in triumph:  for a moment he even loves Glenn Cullen, the Fisheries Malvolio. Jamie misses the moment by kissing his wife - Malcolm can forsee (mistakenly, as it turns out) the day they'll be their own fuckin' photo-op.

 "Are y'pleased?" he asks Mary, when he can work his way back to her. She smiles at him; she's standing with the other wives (which he always fuckin' objected to, she makes the others look like heifers, she shouldn't have to stand with them). Her eyes look tired, though, and immediately he's on alert. One of those fucking journalists, perhaps: jesus, he can always rely on the press to shit on his life.

Malcolm's very fucking specific about how they treat her - she's Dr. Mary J. Alexander, _never_ Mrs Tucker, and when she's in public life it's on her own terms (which Mary'd managed to be offended by, saying that was patronising as well as untrue. Well, she'd been gladhanding _his_ fucking windbags for three hours, perhaps she was right).

She clinks her glass against his, and there's just the faintest hint of irony. "Of course I'm pleased." She toasts him. "This is, I'm sure, exactly how you imagined the revolution2 would look."

It would be comical, if she didn't love him, how quickly his face falls. And how he masks it (she'd cut off her arm rather than tell him, but it's that moment of self-conscious control which makes him look most like his da; that, and when he genuinely laughs). "Hey," he says, voice short, "It's something better. I'll settle for making a fuckin' start on it."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she snaps back, suddenly, inexplicably defensive. She knows she's gone too far, because immediately he takes a step back, hands up, that same sickening automatic stepdown he takes whenever he thinks he's been aggressive.

"Mary, nothing. I - "

"Of _course_ I'm pleased," she tells him, and - because he's always needed to _see_ things, as well as hear them - leans forward and kisses him, warmly, on the cheek. His hand finds hers and holds it.

After that it's all hysteria and corridors, champagne, booze, and then of course Jamie, voice now permanently set to bellow, walking around with a jeroboam but without the coach party of football hooligans (Jamie's family) who turned up after the result - Christ, Malcolm nearly said _verdict_ , what _is_ it about Jamie that makes Malcolm assume he should be in prison?

"I've put the girls in a car," Jamie shouts, companionably, across a crowded hotel room currently being used by 40 MPs to get sweatily, adolescently drunk. At the mention of 'girls' and 'car', several backbenchers (doing coke in an earnest little knot round the fax machine - Malcolm's reliably informed they've never had a girl in their _lives)_ 3 let up a sniggery, sneaky cheer which stops abruptly when they realise it's Malcolm Tucker's wife they're (remotely) leering at.

"Do you want me to smash this in your fuckin' eye?" Jamie asks, intention of doing so switching on-and-off in seconds before he crosses to Malcolm and slaps a hand between his shoulderblades. "Fuckin' brilliant, boss."  Malcolm's back is drenched in sweat. Jamie's hand is hot and slightly damp. "D'you want a drink?"

"Steve's your boss," says Malcolm, mindlessly, aware of the hand. Waking fantasies about Jamie are distinctly more difficult to ignore when the miniature fuck is _touching_ him. He is beginning to suspect - correctly - that Jamie's in constant posession of a one-point plan regarding him: crowd Malcolm, always and everywhere. Jamie is dedicated to the annhialation of all personal space - or, possibly, he's just totally oblivious.

Jamie leaves it there, over-familiar (just like his champagne-breath in Malcolm's ear). "I think I've pulled."

Malcolm jumps like a scalded cat. He is not stupid enough to say "I beg your fuckin' pardon?" in tones of accelerating outrage, but his pulse spikes. "Who?"

"Freddie fucking Chlomondley-Bassett." Jamie grins, necks another mouthful of what is probably Bollinger (Jamie's drinking it as if it's White Lightning).

Silently, incredulously, Malcolm follows Jamie's drink-crazed eyeline toward Pedigree Chum's stupid, drink-flushed face. He's talking to Julius Nicholson, talk and sleek and sipping his champagne. Julius avoids Malcolm's eyes - he's flushed, more with embarrassment than drink. He's just seen Mary into a car, along with two or three members of her media clique. Beneath the (impeccably-applied) makeup, Julius could _see_ she was looking tired. That financial journalist from Bloomberg had his arm round her shoulders; as Malcolm glares his light-blue glare, Julius's stomach twists in sympathy for him. Really, this is _too bad_ of Mary.

Fortunately for him, Malcolm is too much preoccupied to follow the nuances of Julius's guilt-sodden face. He's looking between Pedigree _fucking_ Chum and the miniature psycho, and wondering if the latter might have been joking.

No, it's not a joke. When Jamie makes jokes they're obscene, scatalogical and sign-posted by flashing Vegas lightbulbs and an incredibly smug grin on the cunt's undernourished, washed-out, coughed-up face. Jamie - his Jamie, Malcolm''s Jamie - actually intends to fucking ruin everything they've worked for, to get his cock up Pedigree Chum's hairless puckered arse, sacrificing the government in its fucking cradle to the god of a big gay scandal.

The only thing gaping wider than Freddie's fucking _arse_ is his wet and chinless mouth, which means he's about as trustworthy as a fuckin' hamburger and as stable as one of the fuckin' Spencers (god, she'd be a troublemaker to the fucking end, that one. Probably Freddie's related to her, they've got the same fuckin' awful stripey highlights).

Jamie _actually_ intends to let that fucking spoon-licked white-washed Eton-sucking _cunt_ fuck him. Which must mean that Jamie _wants him_ , which raises, simultaneously two _unbearable_ issues.

One, Jamie has a fucking wife and a fucking _baby_ and the governing law of Malcolm's existence (beyond, even 'Do unto others before the shits can do unto you') is that when you have a wife, there are certain things you _never_. The second issue is that Malcolm will slit Jamie's throat before he allows Cholmondley-Bassett near him.

The room they're standing in is loud (and undergoing a trashing for which other people - people, Malcolm thinks uneasily, that he is meant to _help_ \- will have to pay in the morning), but Malcolm has a way of speaking that makes himself instantly heard _beneath_ the cumulative volume of braying, Trades Union shouting, MTV (christ, there was a lot to be said against youth) and beer. On this occasion, Malcolm thinks it's down to his careful enunciation: Jamie could tell him it's because he, Jamie, is fucking obsessd with Malcolm's lips and can read them even when (as now) all else he sees is double.

Malcolm glares. "You fucking disgust me."

There's a pause, while Malcolm assesses just how badly he's prepared to fuck up. "...come on, we're getting out of this."

Jamie's grin is acquiescence indeed.

When Malcolm gets Jamie into an empty room, his head is pounding with exhaustion, and he's _furious_ at his own lack of foresight. Jamie's wandering round the fixtures, enraptured, as if he's never actually _seen_ a hotel room before.

Above _all,_ though, Malcolm's furious with Jamie. Who is fucking men from the office, despite his wife, and the _wean_ and, even so, the smell and the sight of him is so much what Malcolm wants. His hips and their narrowness; his curly hair, his shoulders, his - unmistakably his _arse_ and those fucking ridiculous bush-baby blue eyes. Jamie goes to the window, peers out at the traffic and press junket below. Malcolm can just peer past him.

All human life is here: adrenaline, marriage, the contact, the job. Malcolm is suddenly overloaded, locked in it all, which means (as it _always_ means, as the very few people close to him have realised) that it's time for the shouting. Jamie has never been scared of Malcolm's shouts.

However, this time, when he's finished his spittle-flecked, terrifying lecture on how if Jamie even fucking thinks about dragging the new Government Great Britain into his sordid cumwipe of a scandal, Malcolm will ship him to the salt-mines in a fucking three-by-two-by-fucking-stupid cunt crate, Malcolm slams Jamie up against the door, and keeps talking.

 _Every one_ , Malcolm tells him, _every one_ of his stupid private-school-fucks will _despise_ him, he explains, with passionate savagery, which doesn't defeat the desire to just breathe from the other man's mouth. He's got himself braced against Jamie, hands pinning the younger man's shoulders. It's nearly as good as hitting him would be.

If Jamie thinks he's on some kind of one-man hamster-brained kamikaze left-footer-fuckin' crusade for redistribution of wealth via public schoolboys' anuses - well, actually, that'd probably be in fucking keeping for you cassock nonces --

"HEY," bellows Jamie, three letters in three foot fucking capitals, and slams Malcolm against the _bathroom_ door, which shakes and rattles and actually Jamie is a lot fucking stronger than Malcolm expected. And now he's stuck between varnished oak and Jamie's warm body, with Jamie shouting for him to _leave the fucking priesthood out of it_ and a very real chance that Jamie's going to fucking batter him to death with any one of the fucking heavy blunt objects (candlestick, lamp) that Jamie has within reach. The micro-catalogue continues before his eyes (minibar, travel iron, towel rail, _kettle_ ) when Jamie suddenly shoves his hips against him and all point in pretending has gone.

Jamie takes Malcolm's throat, adjusts for the collar.

"You stupid jealous cunt," he says, and kisses him.

Malcolm manages five seconds of feeling like he's drowning before he remembers to breathe. In that time, Jamie's got his hand on Malcolm's cock, through his trousers (Malcolm is harder than he's ever been in his _life_ , and has to keep from _thrusting_. Between them, they're kissing with all the finesse of a land-starved sailor. A land-starved sailor who's stupid and drunk).

Jamie tastes of a morass of alcohol and buffet; Malcolm keeps his eyes slightly shut and grips Jamie's hair so hard the other man whimpers, pressing further and further into the kiss. Malcolm registers, distinctly, the moment when he realises Jamie's hard too. This is nearly enough to undo him. Jamie keeps on kissing him, one hand fisting Malcolm's shirt and gradually the room starts to spin faster and faster around them.

When Malcolm decides to stop, he's across the room in seconds, leaving Jamie disshevelled and wild-eyed, swearing like a squaddie and with his belt half-undone. Malcolm feels so sick.

"Tell anyone," he repeats, " _anyone_ about this, and it will be the end of your fucking career... and your marriage." He's working to get back his breathing.

"And yours," Jamie points out, swallowing his outrage until he looks surprisingly calm (though his pupils stay blown).

Malcolm gives him an unreadable look and starts to leave, straightening his tie (his hands are shaking terribly).

Jamie grabs his arm; evidently the calmness was just a facade for the infuriated, perhaps criminally mad-eyed midget who, once again, shoves himself between Malcolm and the door. "You're not going anywhere."

"Don't be so fucking stupid," Malcolm says, but his mouth is a lot dryer than he'd like. Jamie makes a face which is Jamie's approximation of 'expression to be used when dealing with the terminally stupid and/or mad'.

"Look. This is a fucking empty room. You have the key." He puts his hand over Malcolm's hip pocket, and Malcolm jumps like an overbred horse. Jamie pretends not to notice, concentrating - with Machiavellian intent, because they are _going_ to have sex, which Jamie is _brilliant_ at - on expounding his platinum- _diamond_ of a plan. He gestures at the hotel room. "Nobody can get in here without your say-so." He is moving closer to Malcolm, even within a minimum of space, and if he didn't have the instincts of a rattlesnake, Malcolm _knows_ his eyes would be sliding shut.  "If anyone _ever, ever_ finds out we're here, we'll just say we had a load of coke and a prozzie, and the whole thing'll sound totally acceptable, aye?"

He grins, that light-hearted grin beneath those big blue eyes (Malcolm didn't know they could get so dark). Whatever innocence Jamie should still have, at his age (wife and weans aside, Malcolm reflects, laconically), is entirely left out of the look he's sliding up and down Malcolm's frame, and when Malcolm remembers that other men have, recently, been fucking him, Malcolm just wants to tear Jamie apart.

Jamie grins again, evidently convinced of his advantage. "What else are hotel rooms for, if not shagging? I've never had a fuck in a hotel room. Claire and me had our honeymoon in a fucking chalet, self-fuckin'-catering, I can't cook for shite. I don't think I've ever stayed in a hotel, except when our Fergus was in court."

For some reason (Malcolm doesn't want to think about why), this does it. He stares at Jamie with gathering horror. "Get out."

"What?"

"No. No, I'll get out. You give it fifteen fucking minutes and lock the door or I'll be wearing you on my keyring as a little shrunken head." Jamie stares at him, stupidly. Malcolm wants to shake him until his fuckin' head bounces. "For God's sake, your wife's having your fucking babby, your fucking  _second_ \- " He starts to turn the handle.

"Yeah, and whose baby is your -- "

Whatever Jamie was about to say is cut off forever as Malcolm turns around and to all intents and purposes might have grown black wings. Faces worse than Malcolm's do not exist. Rapes have been perpetuated and corpses dumped by better men than the one he is at that moment, and the one he is for the next few minutes. Backed against the television, Malcolm's teeth and eyes only inches from his face, is the only time Jamie's ever genuinely afraid of him.

When he goes, it's out into the press storm, the noise, the car that's found and the streets which get quieter and emptier as they wind towards home. The first place they'd lived in; Mary's house, bought together, the first place he'd ever bothered to furnish. Before that, all his flats looked like hotel rooms.

He unlocks the door quietly, takes his shoes off in the hall, and muffles the fall of his keys. When he hangs his coat up, he cannot see hers. She's sitting on the bed, upstairs, still fully-dressed, in coat and shoes. Her dark hair is loose, kinked from the top-knot.The light from the venetian blind casts amber stripes across the shadows of her face, and he cannot really see her. Something in her still posture frightens him.

His first terror is that she already knows what's happened.

"Mary?"

His second is: she's dying. Third: pregnant. He tells himself he can deal with any of these, although regardless he's round to her side of the bed and down on his fucking knees. "Sweetheart?"

She looks like she's been sitting there all night. Her eyes are red. She's very still; when he puts her hands into his they're cold. "Malcolm. The lecture tour."

Sweet relief washes over him. There's an unexpected benediction just in pushing the hair back from her face, as he hasn't done that in weeks (he really will kill Jamie, stupid fucker. She's his _wife_ ).

"What happened? Has someone fucked you about? Was it Columbia?" She winces, and protective fury speaks for him. "Listen, sweetheart, we can fucking sort this - "

"No," She jerks her hands away. Malcolm registers the car keys in her left hand, and is confused. "No, Malcolm." He peers up at an angle, tries to see her face. She won't show him her eyes. "I don't think I'm going to come back." A pause. "I'm not."

He takes it so quietly, that's the worst part. Kneeling at her feet.

"It's best for both of us, this isn't working." She can't look at him or she'll start crying; he won't cry, she's never seen him cry. "I'm going to stay in America."

It's a lot, and said very quickly. He gets to his feet (she averts her eyes further; he's swaying in her peripheral vision). "I'll get it. I printed it off weeks ago, all I've got to do is sign it. Well, and add the date."  He sounds so awful; she turns.

"Get what?"

"My resignation. I'll come with you."  Their eyes meet for the first time, and to her horror, she can see light on his cheeks.

He looks like he's been shot. Against all her better instincts, she checks she knows where his spare inhaler is: as always, her handbag. He must interpret that thought as hesitation, because he seizes it like an advantage. "Jesus, sweetheart, don't do this. I'll give you anything. Anything you want, just _ask_."

He's back across the room, he's going to kneel down again, or worse, sit beside her, and she isn't going to be able to breathe. She puts her hands up to prevent him (automatic response; one he hates more than anything in the world), and he falls to pacing, running both hands through his hair.

"I'll resign."

She's surprised that she's still able to speak. And so calmly. "I don't want you to resign. I want you to do your job, this is what you're _good_ at."

"Is it the counsellor?" She keeps her eyes on the carpet. "We'll get another, a proper fucking shrink, I'll do what you want, I'll go on my own. I know it's my fault. I know, it's not you, it's never you, jesus, you're fucking _perfect_." He's holding her hands, turning them over and over, looking at the ring - and when she sees it, she starts to cry as well.  " _Mary_." He stops, kneels down again, in an attempt to look into her face. "I can go all the time you're in America - what is it, six months?" She nods, even though she's the one who knows how impossible it all is.

He tries to comfort her, fingers on her cheeks; she doesn't push him away. She's still the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. He could be sick with fear. Instead, he wipes the tears, words taking on this horrible, desperately encouraging tone.

He's trying to smile for her, pretend the crisis has already passed. "It'll be great, it'll be good for you, _jesus_ don't cry, sweetheart, don't cry, I can sort this. I promise." She takes her hands away, he just keeps talking. "I'll be different when you come back. It'll be good for me too." When she doesn't speak, he tries again. "I could get a thinktank job. In the States. Or anywhere. Just say. For fuck's sake," he pleads, and he's never had to plead before, not to her, "just tell me what it is. I'll fucking do it, I can't - I can't do it if you won't _tell_ me, I don't know what it fucking _is_." His temper, there. That rising note. She twists away on the bed, no longer so tall, and hears his exhale that's more like a groan.

"I never _wanted_ to get married."

He's leaning back against the radiator. She doesn't think he'll try to touch her again.

"What?"

"You! You fucking _insisted_ , Malcolm - we were so happy, you just assumed that was the route we _had_ to take, that _I_ had to take.  It wasn't. And it wasn't that - you know how much I loved you, it was never an issue of love. But that was how we started," she's sobbing, and now he makes no move to comfort her. "You thought you were past all that Catholic shit."

"I thought..." he looks ashen.

"You assumed, you see, you asked and you assumed, and how was I meant to say no to you?"

"You've done it often enough!" He covers his face. " I'm sorry, I'm fucking - I didn't - you've been tired, I know, with the book, and.  It doesn't help with me coming back all hours and the phone always being on. I could sleep in the spare room. Put some headphones up to the landline, only I'd have to hear it, I can fucking sort this. You'll see."

"Malcolm, please, just stop. I'm going to America."

"Right, yeah. Right." He does the perimeter of the bed again. God, she's been married to this man for ten years. "Listen, sweetheart. Why don't you _go_ to America, that's fine, and I can come and visit. It'll work. We'll spend some more time together, properly. Real quality time. I'd like to see the States"

"Malcolm, I don't _want_ quality time, I want - " she stops, clamming up. Gets up. Reaching for - her handbag, which is downstairs, which was stupid. She came home quite certain she was going to leave, so why complicate her exit strategy? She doesn't want to get - bogged down, in the annals of this house, this house, god she never _wanted_ this house; he'd thought she had, so he'd bought it, and although she'd been quite pleased they should have moved years ago - property prices are soaring, now's the time to sell, now everywhere's being redeveloped. But he clung on, because he'd never - christ, it wasn't _he_ r fault, it wasn't _her_ fault she should have to be suffocated by all the shit that's ever happened to him.

Her hands shake as she tries to explain this to him. She can't.

He really is losing his temper.

"Then what _is_ it you want?" He glares. "Is there someone else?"

"No!" She sounds appalled - and a spasm of guilt goes across his face.

"Are you pregnant?"

"Malcolm - Malcolm, you're going psycho." Now she reaches for him, and he flinches away. "There's nobody."

"Then stay. Stay. I can make this work. I'll sort it, darlin', I promise you, I fucking adore you, I'll sort it." He's stroking her hair; so much for not wanting her to touch him.

"I don't want you to sort it. That's just it. Stop it, please, Malcolm, I'm not your fucking _doll_."

He looks horrified. "Do I treat you like a doll, is that it? I just try to look after you, Mary - I know you don't fucking need it, I know, I know, I-know-I-know-I-know-I- _know_ ," and she hates him for running through it as quickly as that, because that's as close as she can get to the part of the problem as she's willing to articulate it. "But I'm your husband."

"Like I said," she snaps, gets up, pulls the suitcase out from under the bed, switches on the lamp. He gets out of her way when she goes to the wardrobe, but tries to stop her putting the clothes actually in the suitcase, continuing to beg. Once or twice he tells her he loves her.

At four, she's still packing, and he's still circling, strategising solutions and acting sometimes like she agrees with any of them. At one point he gets wheezy and she has to _fetch_ the inhaler; he follows her to the stop of the stairs, like a child (like the child they didn't have) and she realises he actually expects her to leave then, duck out into the street coatless and caseless, just to get away from him.

His phone rings when she gets back to the bedroom. He doesn't know whether or not to answer: all right, she can _kid_ herself he debates whether to answer. In fact, he's only debating how soon to answer, and whether it'd be better to take the call in the next room. Ultimately, he stays where he is, muttering into his mobile, at the end of the bed.

In the first instance, he is fucking grateful it's not Jamie. Then the call progresses. He tells her as soon as he hangs up, because he always has.

"Fleming's wife has left him."

It's so insanely funny that she can't repress a laugh. "You're joking. Tonight?"

"Tonight. It's going to be in the papers tomorrow. Even with the election." She stares at him. Mary, please."

Her face flushes. "You're asking me not to leave because your fucking - your fucking _poster_ boy's having a crack down on family fucking values and your boss's wife has had the sense -- "

"No! Jesus, no. I'm asking you not to leave because we are not the fucking _Flemings_. Jesus Christ, you're a goddess to her. And I may have  faults - a considerable number of them, as  our good friends at Relate for the Rich and Unintelligent keep fuckin' saying - but I am better than that... loo brush with a fucking dildo strapped on."  She almost smiles, and he seizes that smile and coaxes another, gripping her arms and grinning at her painfully.

When her smile fades, his does too. "Don't go. I'll lose everything. You're not meant to be leaving for another fortnight, you don't fuckin' start at - at - "

"Vassar," she says tightly, pulling away. "I'm not going to cause you trouble, Malcolm, I just want to go."

"Aye, Vassar. Not until the twentieth. Stay with me, pet, please."

He's between her and the door. His eyes are so bloodshot, she can barely see the whites. He touches her cheek, and she forces herself to keep still. "One more try."

"Aye, all right."

She's never seen him look so happy; when she said she'd marry him, he only looked surprised. She takes his hand. "Have a shower, we'll go to bed."

He's half-terrified she'll be gone by the time he's rinsed off, but she's in bed and cool and calm when he reaches for her. Responsive, even - and that's how she stays for more than a week.

Malcolm finds he can't keep food down well, but he sees nothing of Jamie, brings home roses every night - even terrifies the cleaner by trying to clean. When Fleming's grubby little affair with his children's nanny becomes public knowledge, he resists political pressure to jump, so, Malcolm pushes him. Using a technique that Fleming first showed him, he brings Fleming a pre-written resignation letter, and then - when he refuses to sign it - lets him watch his own departure breaking on the news. Malcolm flies home on elation and very, very good whiskey.

True to her word, Malcolm cannot help but feel, Mary stays for a further forty-eight hours, then leaves quietly in the middle of the day. When Malcolm gets home, she's left a letter and everything in their house, except her clothes and the living-room computer.

\----

  
She rings Julius from the airport (flight IAD6X401), her voice cracked as he has never heard it. She cannot know, of course, that Julius regards the request that she makes as a sacred charge.

"Of course. Of course. Every advantage and assistance that I can give him." He is nearly blind, thinking of what Malcolm must shortly go through; regard for the man brings him close to a plea. "Mary, are you --"

"Quite sure, darling," she promises, and he can feel her eyes searching the terminal. "Julius, do you think he'll be all right?"

Julius, kind man though he is, cannot and _will not_ answer. Mary sighs. "I'll call you from Washington."

"Of course. If you need anything, _anything_ , do remember Douglas is at the Embassy."

"I'll be quite all right. Book tours - and I'll have - " her voice cracks. "Oh, god, poor Malcolm. _Poor_ Malcolm."  It's the first time Julius has heard anyone express that sentiment.

Appropriate, though, that she should be the one to do it.

There is a period of silence on the line. However, soon she is back together. "I'm so sorry."

"Houghton seems like a decent chap." His fussy voice is prim with disapproval.

"He is."

"Well, then you must do what you have to do. Goodbye, darling." Upsetting phonecalls have always, well, _upset_ him, but this one is particularly dreadful. Guilt kicks at him, and he speaks again before hanging up. "Do remember Douglas."  
 

\----

  
"My back hurts."

He rolls across, makes some non-specific comforting noise (the room is moving. Shite, this is bad), and is rejected. "Jesus, Jamie, you absolutely stink."

Alcoholic mumble against her shoulder. He's been out on the piss, _again_ , and is making penitential statements into her skin. With appalling difficulty, Claire rolls. Her stomach's already distended into shapelessness (Jamie's babies make their presence known early), and she feels a stab of resentment against her still-slim, almost sleeping husband. When they met, they could have been siblings - fair and dark, both slim and slight, and each (though she would die rather than let Jamie hear this) unmistakably _pretty_. But now, not only does the miniature _shite_ only have to _look_ at her to get her pregnant (and he's running to fucking seed, for all he's still nine-eight) why does _one tiny man_ produce such sodding _enormous_ babies? She's not even halfway yet.

Jamie attempts a drunken kiss, and she pushes him away.

They lie there for a few seconds in the dark. "Ow."

Jamie sits upright in seconds, flicking on the lamp (and, indeed, knocking it over along with a cup of cold coffee), alarm filling the lines of his glistening, sweaty, upside-down face. "Jesus fuck, are you all right? Don't fret, sweetheart, we'll be - oh, jesus _christ_."

And Claire looks at him, and she can't not laugh. "It's indigestion, you silly fuck. Mother of God."

He stares at her, and, after a second, laughs back, delighted and relieved. More welcoming, she settles back down, and Jamie ranges himself behind her, face between her downy shoulderblade, forehead at the top of her spine.

It would take a peculiar kind of hypocrite to sleep without a nagging conscience, after that interlude: and, accordingly, Jamie struggles as he lies beside his wife.

He cannae fucking help it. He never _could_ help - it's only this, only the fuckin' _men_ that keep them together at all. What's he meant to do? Nothin' he ever _could_ , that's what.

At this time of night, thoughts of hell creep up on him - and he curls in, defiantly, with his girls (his _two_ girls - little Maggie's next door, making third) safe against his chest. He's doing his fuckin' best.

He lies awake, and thinks about Malcolm.

\----

  
1 It's still designer, though - it fucking horrifies Malcolm, the amount Jamie spends on her. He knows to the penny what Jamie gets paid; he's seen the house. They must be _haemorrhaging_ cash. Oh, and the goddaughter thing - Claire wanted Mary, and Jamie wanted Malcolm, and Jamie reasoned that a group-tackle would be something they couldnae refuse.  
  
2He hates the word 'revolution'. It reminds him of Edinburgh, and uni, and a few misbegotten cock-in-arse scenarios (replete with wasted ideals) that he'd rather his sainted wife never knew. Sometimes Jamie uses the word without irony, and funnily enough that just makes everything worse.  
  
3 The only backbencher who _has_ got a woman, Hugh Abbot, is currently watching his life _flash before his eyes_ in the back of a taxi. He's going home to Irene, the woman he'll shortly _have_ to start referring to as his 'first wife'. Kate has got herself pregnant. Well, he supposes he was involved.


	4. rich or poor, blind or lame, living in another country under another name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The new administration have power, but not yet foresight. Over the first year in government, Malcolm Tucker strikes fear into the hearts of backbenchers, euthanizes Hugh Abbot's first marriage, and makes a very worthwhile appointment to his personal staff.
> 
> With financial chaos, corruption in Defense and troubles in Transport (or: the Coming Of Fatty), Malcolm's life as an almost single man would be horrific enough even without news from across the Atlantic. While the world goggles at the Clinton trial (and Julius, Malcolm's unwelcome lunch guest, fails to make a connection), it's a tragedy in Glasgow that forces Malcolm to face the possibility of also losing his second-in-command. For Jamie, there is even more at stake.

To the surprise of nobody but Malcolm, Malcolm survives the next six months.

What he most hates is that his life still has meaning. There are moments, minutes, even occasional hours, when the fact that he is now undisputed  king, lord and emperor, High Imperial Prince of the Scotland-England-Wales-Norn-Ireland Comms team, and transcendental leader of the imperial Scottish raj, shines brighter and harder than the rest of his life. He is brilliant, in power. Cliff faces open and drawbridges fall for him just as he'd always known they would.

  
And there are hours when he persuades himself Mary isn't really gone, when being in the office is the same as being in the office while she's at the LSE. There are even times when he can store, under the four-year-plans and the five-hour meetings and the endless circling and layerings of spin, the idea that she'll come back. She is his wife, after all. This is all a fucking mistake - nobody'll find out until she doesn't come back from her lecture tour, and the thing is, she _will_ come back.

And there are other times when his sister calls him and makes him go round and feel the baby kick, and weekends when he cannot drag himself beyond the doorstep or muster the courage to eat. Five distinct memories of Mary stand out, shaping his loneliness and the viler moments in their home.

First - him lying in bed during the brief, giddying idyll when _he_ was more junior than _she_ , who lectured at half eight, while he started at nine. He lay on his back and watched the new Mrs Tucker zip up her dress and smile at him, padding through last night's discarded treasures to locate earrings, boots and bag.

Second - him making her eggs on buttered toast in their kitchen.

Third - her entertaining guests in their dining room.

Fourth - her sleep, and how absolutely solemn her face became as she slept; how she claimed never to remember her dreams. And, finally

Fifth - her voice, on the phone, talking in the next room.

He's got months to track her down and find out - and he wants to fly out, he _does_ , but every week there's a new fucking scandal, a new initiative, an impossibly high level of impetus and hope to try and sustain - with precious little help from the cretins who seem to have thought through getting into office and _absolutely no further_. Especially the youngsters - the backbench MPs look more like a crew of fuckin' joyriders than creators of a Nation State. The new government is colossally fuckin' expensive - this doesn't bother Malcolm as such, he's colossally fuckin' expensive himself, but it's hard to staunch the flow when the system's haemorrhaging gold in nine thousand places at once. 

Sometimes, he derives a wild, insomniac hope from the fact Mary didn't leave her rings, only that letter. He bought her that eternity ring for her last birthday - something better than the fuckin' _bean_ she'd had to be contented with when they married.

He doesn't let himself rest and he can't make himself sleep. Gradually, Malcolm's hope gets fainter, and - since even Jamie's leaving him a-fucking-lone, he can only assume everyone _smells_ his fucking insanity, descending like a theatre curtain.

\----

Something starts to change around week 8. Malcolm knows Fleming will have no opportunity for revenge through a messy, trashy vengeance-headline; Mary's letter makes that clear (and in any case - she's too fuckin' classy, she's not that _bitch_ Fleming married). But after seven weeks of hearing nothing, of skimming the surface and never being able to drop, he starts to feel the jumpiness set in.

He knows this feeling; it comes with the territory, just as it came during the last two periods of sleeplessness in his life; his mother's death, and his father's reappearance, the latter staged during the weeks of his election as President of Edinburgh SU. Paranoia, all the fucking time; convinced people are finding out, convinced people are knowing; from feeling like a leper, he's convinced, too, that Jamie is starting to follow him everywhere with his fucking eyes again, negating the possibility that whatever happened on election night was alcohol-induced false memory.

People could say Malcolm's struggling, now. Struggling to keep it together. Small things - like Hugh Abbot's divorce, and another fucking shotgun wedding six weeks latter - are easily handled: he minimises the bad press, recommends the registrar equivalent of Jamie's Catholic priest, and sends the fucking love god off into the political wilderness with a red-faced goblin they'll probably name Charlie or Hugo or Laurie. Bigger things - like the rapidly-expanding fat fuck from Transport - stretch his concentration to the max.When Cecil Archer MP turns out to have given the Defence contract to the son of the woman who just _happen_ sto be his former mistress, Malcolm loses seventy-two hours and nearly half a stone.

He can't come in smelling of whiskey so he gets up an hour earlier to gargle and scrub himself with the kind of carbolic soap his mam used on him as a child. After a few weeks he stops drinking; it shows in his face fuckin' immediately, he can't go on. Another six months of water.

He can no longer face the bed, so he sleeps on the sofa or, fully-dressed, in an armchair. He can't move in that house for touching things bought, organised or beautified by the woman who left him. But he can't rearrange it, can't talk about it and can't understand it. The letter begged for time, a moratorium on contact and he does try, hard, for nine weeks - until the night he wakes up, empties her desk, finds the itinerary and dials Massachusetts without really hesitating.

In his head, he has the feverish beginnings of a fucking impressive speech, but his foundations start crumbling when he has to pick an extension, and when he hears her voice, for the first time in sixty-three days, he nearly breaks down. He says _Mary_ , and perhaps it's guilt or a desire not to put the Harvard switchboard through three hundred frantic dialbacks and re-routings but she doesn't hang up. The darkest hour traditionally precedes the dawn and is of standard length, but Malcolm compresses his to twenty-five minutes in which he unabashedly, unashamedly begs her to return. And then, when she refuses, demands she tell him why. Which she can't.

Actually, turns out that last bit was a lie. She's in America with a fucking _Observer_ hack not as interested in keeping it quiet as she is, but Malcolm doesn't know that yet, and _won't_ , because there's nobody brave enough to tell him.

Actually, turns out that last bit's a lie too.

\----

Julius and Malcolm have lunch, once. Malcolm's courting party donors from the financial sector. Julius sits across expensive, snowy linen and longs just to hold him; Malcolm is whip-thin, teetotal and as extraordinary as ever. It helps, of course, that Malcolm's in his 'charming' mode; charisma and wit flares out of him like a signal. Between bits of purring, persuasive oratory, Malcolm picks indifferently at his food and Julius - who has successfully repressed these feelings for some time, and who _cannot_ be indifferent to roast duck, orange jus and _legumes_ (he thinks it's an atrocity that Malcolm's had salad) - has the desperate urge to _feed him_. Nobody, he decides self-righteously, has ever _looked after_ Malcolm (this is an uncharitable thought towards Mary, and Julius reproaches himself for it - he has always thought himself a feminist).

Malcolm doesn't ask directly after Mary, but Julius sees with inconsolable pity that he still wears his wedding ring (Julius, a product of his upbringing, finds it a tender novelty that men should wear their wedding rings at all).

  


  


Julius is missing Douglas terribly, but it hardly seems tactful to share that with Malcolm.

  


  
  
**  
Six months later **

  
"Malc, sit down." Nothing. The auld fucker's still standing, pulsing like one big human vein. He's the colour of a vein. He looks like he might actually spurt blood if he doesn't relax. 'Malc, I said, sit down. Sweetheart - new girl - "

"Her name's fuckin' _Sam_ ," Malcolm spits, sitting with his arms precisely stretched along the armrests like a very old, very dead Pharoah newly-shrivelled on a throne.

Jamie exhales. "Sam, right, Sam, can you get him a fuckin' brandy or something?"

"Coffee," rasps Malcolm.

"Coffee."

"And lock the door."

"And _lock_ the door," Jamie echoes, sounding surprised but not displeased. The new girl is already wiser to the situation than either Jamie or Malcolm, and gives Jamie a 'this-will-be-the-last-human-face-you-see' look of sympathy between bringing the coffee and locking the door. Jamie turns an expression of pained concern (forcing down jubilation, because that fucking bitch, that _fucking bitch_ ) on Malcolm, and begins.

He slides the brown envelope back across the table, and takes out two photographs. Malcolm recognises Mary's green coat, and the shape of her head. The shoes, dress and laptop are new. Her hair is bobbed.

Bile rises, but he finds he can shout, at least, and has a moment of blessed gratitude that the miniature fucker with the envelope is someone whose head he can mount on the wall. Crushing rage and spitting fury - finally he can shout at somebody about this, someone undeserving and ungrateful who has only mentioned this because he wants to fucking _ruin_ Malcolm's career -

" - SHE'S ON A LECTURE TOUR," Malcolm finishes, picking up the mug and aiming at Jamie's fucking head except that Jamie grabs his wrist and doesn't look scared.

"Listen, you _prick_ ," he snaps, eyeballing Malcolm across the desk (Malcolm yanks his head uselessly - Jamie keeps him still). "She's on a 'lecture tour' with that Yank wanker from the _Observer_ , except the tour's _over_ now and they're living in fucking _Boston_. They've been there half a fucking year - she's probably writing a fucking _novel_. The only reason it hasn't fucking broken is because I've been firefighting it ever since we got in."

Malcolm is looking at his wrist where Jamie's fist has pinned it. He'd been looking forward to crockery chipping off Jamie's forehead, but Jamie's still standing there as though this level of violence is normal (after nearly a year in Malcolm's department, it probably is). "Listen," he says again, soothingly. "I can keep this quiet, but only if you give me something - fuckin' _anything_ , Malc, to go on. I'll sort it." He gives Malcolm a look that's painfully close to sympathy. "It's no' about your fucking arse anymore."

He doesn't know whether he feels more sick with humiliation or relief. Jamie makes things marginally easier by accepting what he's told, not asking any fucking stupid questions, and anticipating all Malcolm's preferred political techniques. At some point, through a dizzying fucking headache, he realises that Jamie really will take care of this, really can. They finish with a briefing on everything that has to happen this afternoon, and Jamie heads off to (complete a series of immpecable and precise strategic press liaison manoeuvres signified, in Jamie's idiolect, by a promise to) 'drag those press bastards into the Berwick Street gents and shit in their fucking stomachs'.

Malcolm is left sitting in his office. After a moment, he reaches for the photographs and studies the picture of the man beside his wife. A few moments later, the phone rings, and he enjoys the supreme pleasure of hanging up on Julius Nicholson.

  
\----

  
Contrary to his own expectations, Malcolm still doesn't die in the night.

An American solicitor sends divorce papers to what was their marital home, Malcolm brings them into work and dumps them on Sam's desk.

He has managed not to research the fucking yank wankstain too closely.

(Jamie's made sure the lying, cheating cuntwipe will never get column inches on this side of the Atlantic. He's also discreetly had his tyres slashed. Malcolm is not unaware of this as a possibility).

Sam marks the form with Xs (having ascertained that Malcolm will keep the house and that Mary's pre-empted the possibility of masochistic Catholic declarations about financially supporting her with half his lifesblood by refusing everything in advance) and gives them to Malcolm with minimal explanation. Then she leaves to do her filing (she's reorganising the system and attempting to digitise Downing Street for the twenty-first century, when it happens) and stays away for over an hour.

When she gets back, Malcolm's snarling over broadsheet spreads on the party's first year in office. He's sealed and addressed an envelope. Sam is, obviously, reluctant to start intercepting Malcolm's unsent correspondence, but a little judicious steaming confirms he _has_ filled everything in correctly.

At this point, she reflects, things really _can_ Only Get Better.

  
\----

  
Jamie makes several good goes at seducing Malcolm,1 all of which his boss rejects without explanation. When Jamie guesses correctly (less 'guesses' than, at top volume, bellows his way through the equally-infuriating possibilities) that it's because Malcolm's still _married_ , he flies (further) into a rage and calls Malcolm a stupid jessie Puritan who's still allowing that frigid ice-bitch to fuck his life. Malcolm gets him by the throat and asks him _how_ _long_ he thinks he'd last on the breadline.

They settle back into their usual roles at work (omnipotent; stalker-cum-acolyte), but it's uneasy. The first year of Malcolm's reign is one they'll try to edit out of their mental histories.

Jamie's rages are worsening, incidentally, both in public and private - Malcolm actually has to lock him in the pantry for five minutes after he hits a (male, fortunately) staffer across the face. Jamie's eyes look even more psycho than usual, ringed with fatigue, and Malcolm holds him at arm's length (fucking difficult, thanks to a mixture of Jamie's struggling and whatever unholy possession is _still_ making Malcolm want to press him against the wall and _bite_ him) while trying to work out what's wrong.

Jamie rants something about his fucking brother-in-law withholding information, none of which makes any sense until Jamie admits Claire's five months pregnant, _again_ , and not happy about it.

Malcolm thinks this has to be rock-bottom (he thinks worse of Jamie every time Claire is mentioned, partly on principle and partly from a sick, nameless jealousy) but then the Press grapevine - less a grapevine, more self-seeding hemlock - says Claire's badgering Jamie to transfer to Edinburgh. Closer to her family.

Jamie just doesn't mention it. He just stomps about, terrorising the flotsam whenever Malc needs to rest his throat, and glorying in the filthier details of Clinton's trial (Douglas, meanwhile, is growing thin and pale and distracted in an East Coast winter, doubting he or his loved one will see Spring).

And then, on a Thursday afternoon, three weeks after Nellie Mairead Macdonald is born by Caesarean section, her paternal grandmother dies on a Glasgow admissions ward.

\----

Malcolm spends the four days of Jamie's personal leave convinced he won't return.

At work, this will be a fucking liability. The other consequences, Malcolm just refuses to think about.

Of course Jamie will fucking leave. Malcolm thinks bitterly of Claire (of whom Mary always thought fondly, meaning that Malcolm hates being in a room with her even more than he would hate any _other_ woman who was married to Jamie), and with something like terror of Jamie, dragging a post-operative, breastfeeding wife and three weans up to a council estate funeral on barely six hours' notice.

He thinks of Jamie surrounded by priests and relatives and endless Glasgow drizzle: whereas Malcolm gets asthmatic at the very _thought_ of going back, Jamie's a kind of folk hero, with nine hundred cousins and a mother barely fifteen years older than himself. For each of Jamie's four days, Malcolm's dogged by a sickening desire to just _ring_ the stupid fuck, find out what's happening; Malcolm's heard dark rumours about the state Jamie went off in when he got the call (Malcolm wasn't there, and fucking hates himself for the fact - he's got the uncharacteristic urge to just _hold_ him). He's also heard (via Eachann, who is actually Claire's brother's girlfriend's sister's uni flatmate, in one of those dizzying twists of incestuous Mafia-ism) about Claire's response to being dragged up there before she's even allowed to _drive_.

He tries to distract himself by reading the newspapers, and spitting over the news that Julius's company have turned the FTSE into a series of decorative centrepieces for their big bouquet of gold. Sam rings through to say Julius has just pledged obscene amounts for the new project in Northern Ireland (that twatting tart, Malcolm could have _told_ the PM not to bother marrying a Catholic). Malcolm's still annoyed by Westminster's human horsefly - now the baldy shit's being photographed with the PM at the fuckin' seaside, dandling the First Baby with considerably more aplomb than its actual father. Fucking Julius Nicholson. After the nuclear codes get tapped, there'll he be, with a rolled-up umbrella and a plateful of smug, glowing Kit Kats. Why can't he just go on _being rich_? And stay the _fuck_ out of Malcolm's (quite unusual) hair.

  
\----

Malcolm's decree absolute comes through the day Jamie's due back - when the pit-bull isn't in and snarling by ten, Malcolm rings Claire for a chat that'll feed his 4 a.m. death-sweats from now til eternity. She sounds exhausted and angry, and says she has _no idea_ when Jamie's coming back - only it won't be to their home. Malcolm can hear their baby Nellie crying in the background.

Claire finishes (voice rising on a sob) by saying Mary was right, and hangs up, leaving Malcolm to resist the temptation of clawing into the handset, because even now the wounds are still fresh and perhaps _Claire_ knows what Malcolm got wrong.

Jamie rings up to extend his personal leave by two days, speaking only to Sam. Malcolm doesn't ask how Jamie sounded, but Sam looks worryingly spooked.2 Malcolm actually fucking considers sending a few foot soldiers out to _find_ him, just in case the stupid bastard's thinking of walking into a river (fuckin' typical, he'd float up seven days later like something out of _Larkin_ , and jesus _christ_ , Jamie, _where are you_ ), and what with the IT overspend and that fat middleman at the Treasury choosing now to give his cousin a consultancy contract, it's not one of Malcolm's better days.

It ends, briefly, when Malcolm gets home at half past ten and falls asleep at once. He wakes up half an hour later to find Jamie on his doorstep, black suit as wet as oilskin, and with a drowned carnation sticking out of the top pocket. He smells of airports, and his fixed grin might be convincing if the rest of him didn't have shellshock.

Jamie seems to have got there on foot, which is mildly horrifying considering the weather and the possibility of press intrusion, but Malcolm's prepared to let that black mystery go unsolved as Jamie heaves a damp carrier of two dozen beer bottles from Malcolm's wet doorstep to his pristine, interior hall. He is swaying like a drunk man, but Malcolm (following him down to the living room with icy disdain for the brown puddles his feet leave) is more worried than that. A drunk, soaked, non-specifically broken Jamie he could cope with; one Glasgow drunk is much like any other, and this one would just give him drowned blue eyes and maudlin apologies until Malcolm'd stripped him off, hosed him down and folded him, dead or alive, into a properly-made spare bed.

But then Jamie dumps his wet coat on the coffee table and says "Great news: she's chucked me out, so you can go on and fuck me," and Malcolm realises he's now in his private Scottish version of hell and the _Twilight Zone_.

When Malcolm doesn't immediately take him up on the generous offer of unfettered access to his soaking, unwashed, liver-pickled body, Jamie shrugs genially and starts drinking the alcohol, eschewing the beer he bought for the first thing he can find in Malcolm's drinks cabinet.3 Malcolm lets him, because only sex, violence or alcohol is going to snap Jamie out of this, and Malcolm's prepared to play the long game of vomiting rather than a) fuck someone who's essentially ethanol and water, or b) batter him.

Jamie keeps talking about how it's great, it's all over, and he thinks he's being incredibly fucking suave, until Malcolm (still keeping very, very still and at a safe distance) realises with no little horror that the additional alcohol is making _no obvious difference_ to Jamie's condition. Malcolm feels uncannily like the murderers of Rasputin must have felt, when  that hairy bastard kept refusing to lie down and die. 

It's only when Jamie sways, staggers, and cuts his hand on a (now late-lamented) bit of china on one of Malcolm's several hundred pristine built-in shelves that Malcolm ("Jesus, Jamie - fuckin' hell, keep _still_ , you're bleeding like - Jesus Christ, what do you have, arteries or a paintgun?") reaches for a teatowel and a few hard facts.

To the point of queasiness, Malcolm hates blood. He can cope if he's shed it himself. Not when it's everywhere, including his upholstery. He manages to wad the cut and sit Jamie down, but now Jamie's looking green as well as grey, and staring at the teatowel where it's slowly oozing red. Jamie bleeds like a bitch and always has done; Malcolm remembers hauling him out of a pub fight the night before his wedding (oh god, he'd pay to have that bit of lobe cut out) and thinking the little shit was actually dying before he sourced the infinitesimal scrape to his chin.

Predictably, despite being a one-handed drunk with a bloody towel, Jamie has another bash at getting his tongue down Malcolm's throat. With a gentleness that Malcolm's glad he won't remember, the older man prises his hands away, and decides not to bother with either the scabrous ("you fucking pathetic alkie, what makes you think I'd _ever_ want - ") or the worryingly honest ("The first time I'm with you, I want you to remember") versions of the speech where he negates all possibility of sex.

Jamie looks mournful: starting to get impatient, Malcolm fills another tumbler with the worst combination of spirits devisable, and slides it across the table, asking 'Jamie, what the fuck have you done?'.

Jamie takes one big sip and the vicious combination of burnt whiskey and bitters kickstarts the necessary reflexes.

In the kind of drunk that Jamie is, tears are never far from the surface. He explains (coughing) that they had to cremate his mam, not a burial (Malcolm winces), because Jamie couldn't _afford_ it (he's bought Claire and the girls private healthcare) and it was fucking awful, Malc, fucking _awful_ , and he saw Fr. O'Connolly, and it was like the bastard _knew_. He was listening to the priest and he got so fucking _scared_ , and Malcolm knows before Jamie even finishes, that the upshot will be that Jamie's told Claire (his miniature angel with a will of fucking steel) that her degenerate shit of a husband _also_ likes men.

Still drowning in his own personal misery, Jamie doesn't notice how grey Malcolm goes, or how still. For the first time, Jamie's boss is calculating what a genuine fucking liability Jamie could be, not if he _goes_ back to Scotland (three hundred and fifty precious miles away), but if he stays. Has Jamie confessed - has he been specific - has he, under any circumstances, mentioned _Malcolm_ by inference or name.

Claire, Jamie continues, without breath or pause to notice Malcolm's chilled stare, frozen hands, has chucked him out. He's said he was sorry, but Claire's chucked him, and _she wants a divorce_ , Jamie finishes, growing hoarser, she wants to _take his kids_.

Malcolm could kill him, this is such a mess; he even catches the spluttered fucking atrocity that is the word 'bi' in the middle of one of Jamie's drunken sobs (and as drunken sob stories go, this is the very drunkest). Malcolm runs his hands through short greying hair, in an excess of worry, while Jamie curls around his bandaged hand and more or less collapses, opposite.

He talks about his mam, and his _da_ (a man Malcolm's never heard him mention, for the obvious reason). The auld church biddies who raised him; the decent estate priests who sanctified his education and catapulted him to the belief in better things. Old Fr. Benson had paid for Jamie's school uniforms; even older Fr. Murray who was the only one who'd sit his nan's kitchen after her youngest daughter got pregnant at fifteen. And how being a priest meant _rules_ and _power_ and _someone to follow_ (something he's always needed, Malcolm supplies, in his mind) but then there was Claire and he had _no choice_ but to get out. _And then_ , Jamie chokes, _I came to London. And you fucked everything up for me_.

Not _your deeds_ , thinks Malcolm, numbly. Not _what you did_. Just _you_ , the fact of _you_. 

He does of course know it's not true. Nor is it the declaration of love implied in Jamie's wet face and helpless, maddened eyes. It's certainly not the declaration Jamie probably intends. They're respectively too old and too stupid for any of that to make sense. Malcolm could tell himself that if it hadn't been _him_ , it would have been another -- besides, the tiny psycho's discounting fucking _Kiefert,_ and _Kinley_ , and probably _Andrews_ and _Gibson_ and a thousand fucking medieval gobshites like them. Malcolm's mind supplies another one: Freddie fucking _Cholmondley-Bassett_ (now spending a Siberian winter in the political gulags of _Social Research_ ).

And Mary would have left Malcolm even if the poison dwarf hadn't brought his gymslip girlfriend to the top of Malcolm's shit list. It could have been _anyone_ , for Jamie. And for her.

The problem is, it couldn't have been anyone but Jamie, for Malcolm.

And after realising that, well, Malcolm just feels fucking exhausted.

Moving through all the mess, the chaos and the incompetence and the unquesionable mountains of fuck-up, he accedes to his own desire just to pull Jamie in, and _hold_ him, against his chest, until the stupid, sobbing fucker has thrashed and battered and shouted himself to death. Or quiet. From the sodden breathing against the front of his shirt, Malcolm assumes it's quiet. It's the first time he's ever held a man like this; Jamie goes totally limp when Malcolm kisses him. Forehead, cheek, hair.

Puir bastard, Malcolm thinks, almost irrelevantly. And then: _what a fucking moron_.

"I'll sort it," he promises, when Jamie eventually raises his drowned, drunk eyes to his.

"The lawyers'll fucking _screw_ me, Malc. She's got one already, this fuckin' tightwad solicitor from _Edinburgh_ \-- "

" -- she's not taking the girls back there?" He can't help holding Jamie a little tighter, and the younger man burrows.

"No, no, she doesnae wanna do that. They're in nursery, Maggie's all set for school. I've said I'll keep paying for the house; I've said I'll do _anything_ \-- " He breaks off, but Malcolm's looking straight ahead. He sounds a lot calmer when he speaks again.

"Does she know - ?"

"No, jesus fuck, Malc, _no_ \- I'd never - I didn't even _mention_ you in confession, I just said I wanted - which is fucking true, we haven't." Malcolm determinedly ignores that accusatory note. He can't help shuddering slightly.

"I'll pay for a solicitor. Don't worry about it anymore. They're better off with their mam - Jamie, shut up, bairns always _are_ , and the wee lassie's only just - "

" - only just _born_ , Christ, what kind of a shit father am I, they'll be like _I_ was _."_ He covers his face, and Malcolm, rolling his eyes, hitches them further back up the sofa, Jamie's damp body an uncomfortable weight (and probably leaving a fucking tidemark on the cushions, Christ, it's like keeping _Caliban_ as a housepet) against his.

"They will not. I'll pay for a solicitor, a barrister. She's not a bad girl, she's just shocked. It's a dreadful shock." As well he remembers.

"I can't afford -- "

" -- I know, haud your fuckin' whisht, do you think I don't _know_? I said I'll pay. I'll fucking sort it." Malcolm's voice gets gentler the closer Jamie gets to sleep, loosening his arms as soon as he decently can. Too much contact with Jamie's unnerving, and it doesn't escape his notice that the deathgrip of that drunken slumbrat on the sofa is the nearest he's had to an embrace in - well - a very long time.

He hasn't lied, though: he _can_ sort this. He'll put through the calls in the morning, as soon as Jamie's sober enough to have his head held to the phone. In the interim, Malcolm puts a bucket beside the sofa and some newspaper under his shoes. At four o'clock, he wakes to a crash downstairs and finds that Jamie's fallen off the sofa, and now sleeps with his head inside the bucket (which, Malcolm queasily ascertains, is mercifully empty).

Convinced the stupid fucker will probably choke on his tongue, by dawn, Malcolm attempts to lift him, fails _utterly_ (Jamie weighs the same as several dead fat men sewn into the skin of one small thin one) and settles for wrapping him in a throw. The bucket he retains, as it partially muffles the snoring. Then he settles opposite and watches rolling news (muted) until the sun comes up and, vampire-like, he falls asleep.

When Malcolm wakes, Jamie is sitting in front of him with the phone and an anguished, His-Master's-Voice cast to his eyes and face. Malcolm takes a moment to recover from the evidence of his own lunatic philanthropy, takes the phone and dials, coughing his way into life in the time it takes for Struan & Robertson's Chambers to pick up. "Jesus, do you always sound like that in the morning?" Jamie asks, before Malcolm glares him into silence (the answer is yes, although he's often even more wheezy).

When Malcolm hangs up, he gives Jamie the curtest of nods but his eyes glint with triumph. Jamie barrels into him for a handshake that ends with Jamie's booze-stink face against his neck, and the bastard's still-damp arms around his waist. Malcolm has to recoil, so as not to asphyxiate, but something between sleep-deprivation and victory is spiking his adrenaline. This, he can fix. He _can_ solve this one. That any fucking solicitor _Claire_ could afford could outwit the massed forces of hell and the judiciary as garrisoned by Malcolm, is risible.

Jamie dozes off again, blocking the TV and most of the sun, and Malcolm, trapped, contemplates the days ahead without closing his eyes. Jamie is fucking uncanny when it comes to his job, and if he can just keep him leashed until this particular Gorbals Revisited episode is back in the pipeline, all will be well. Maybe keep him off the phones, and definitely don't give him a computer (unless what the World Wide Web _needs_ is some virtual terrorist activity), but, overall it'll be fine.

Jamie mutters something violent in his sleep. Malcolm _whishts_ him absent-mindedly, deeply regretting that he doesn't have a magic kettle or some sort of _jetpack_ that'd bring him his first coffee of the day without dislodging seven tonnes of Jamie.

They've got the PM's stupid fucking dodge-the-bomb game on Monday - Malcolm fucking hates Belfast, and flying, but it's the price of extending the Glorious Leader's playpen. Mildly repulsed by the smell of booze and pheremones filing the heavy air, Malcolm reaches out and strokes Jamie's curls, feeling the last of the rain. He would, he accepts (with the weight of defeat) do _anything_ to protect him.

Claire's not stupid enough to take the kids anywhere for the next five days; and even if _she_ is, her solicitor - Malcolm had actually fucking _laughed_ when Matthew named the firm - isn't.

Jamie may as well come with him to Belfast.

In separate rooms, of course.

He tells Jamie as soon as they're both awake at the same time. Jamie looks at him with awe. Malcolm sternly repeats the condition of separate rooms.

Deep in the back of Jamie's blue eyes, something reckless and unstoppable flickers back into life.  
  
\----------

1They tend to follow the same basic format. Jamie gets himself alone with Malcolm, in the wee small hours of the morning, when sanity is running low and the cleaners haven't statred yet. Whether he pins Malcolm to the filing cabinet, or wedges himself against the desk, it doesn't get too far - although one time he does get his hand up into the auld fucker's hair. Malcolm's eyes slide closed and it might go better if Jamie's mouth hadn't dropped open and produced this pathetic _moaning_ sound. Malc'd come to like a disgruntled cobra, and off Jamie had fucked. Although he doesn't know it, Jamie's best chance of success had been the Sunday Twatface had invited him and the bairns to the Chequers brunch. Claire - pregnant _again_ , in a turn of events less fuckin' laughable than horrific (although Jamie swore to Malcolm, and indeed his mother, they'd been using condoms) - had stayed at home. Jamie had lounged on the Chequers lawn in a white shirt and blue jeans, and Malcolm (sunlessly flipping waffles) thought his knees might buckle. Of course, fuckin' Julius was there. Apparently, he and the trout-wife had been at BPP together. Malcolm was starting to feel very slightly stalked.

2And not just by Jamie's reaction when Sam said Julius had sent a corporate expression of sympathy (sent between trans-Atlantic phonecalls which keep going unanswered. Julian is still just a shade too proud to call the Embassy directly).

3 Fuckin' disgusting and implicitly homosexual fruit liqueur _bought by Julius_ \-- Malcolm winces, as he does whenever he's reminded of Julius.


	5. sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-size bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Head of the Press & Communications team visits Belfast to liaise with his Irish equivalent and (covertly) audition Westminster MPs for work there. That is, if the calls from London (the Prime Minister's in domestic difficulty) stop coming. When Jamie Macdonald begins to implement his Three Point Plan, a sudden change of schedule sees Malcolm Tucker unexpectedly outwitted, as unexpected news arrives from Celtic Park, Parkhead, Glasgow.
> 
> Meanwhile, our man in Washington causes a minor scandal in a Massachusetts Avenue bistro, and Mary Alexander Jefferson must consider her position. At last, Julius Nicholson receives a late-night telephone call.

Jamie finds a new flat on Saturday. Malcolm visits, exceptionally fucking briefly, and makes a mental note never to let Jamie choose anything on his own again. The man who can detect a mistress and specify drug of choice from fifty paces apparently cannot detect a property disaster. While Malcolm wouldn't put a dog or a Tory to sleep there, Jamie got distracted by the prospect of living opposite a pub and said yes to the damp-brown kitchen (with inexplicable vibrating floor), the collapsible oven and the neighbour who's almost certainly a flasher. It's a measure of Malcolm's social mobility (he thinks) that his first thought is how soon John fucking Lewis could get there, bringing Venetian blinds and a squeegee mop.

They fly out on Sunday, Malcolm having briefed Jamie, in the quiet tones that engender most terror, that should Jamie make even _one_ cock-eyed reference to the Troubles, the Pope, or worse still, _football_ , he'll be doing doggy-paddle down the Lagan until they're building ships on his  _heid_. Jamie says oh aye, cuntface, and goes back to swigging the duty-free and ogling the stewardesses. He makes instant friends in Belfast and spends the two nights of the junket drinking so enthusiastically that you'd almost suspect that the drowned rat with tearstains on his face never occurred.

Malcolm quite likes Belfast; he always _has_ , preferring the Irish junkets to anything where there's a long-haul and he has to wear sunblock (he looks terminal when he wears sunglasses). He and Jamie are mainly there to shepherd the Ministers and establish with their Irish counterparts exactly which MPs will sink like stones or go up in flames, should they be seconded there. It's a test of the Glorious Leader's cabal, and their ability to keep from sounding twattish, once they're across the water.

Jamie is full of bonhomie and bravado and Malcolm wouldn't know whether to be pissed off or contemptuous, except that whenever the Irish Press team stagger off, it's _him_ Jamie turns to, emptying tumblers in meaningful silence before Malcolm orders him to his own room.

And Malcolm wouldn't know whether Jamie even _remembered_ his drunken invitation to buggery, except that on Tuesday morning - the day before the night they're meant to _leave_ \- Jamie swaggers up to him in reception and, seething with lunatic joy, says "I've cancelled our flights" with the kind of glee reserved for the institutionally insane.

Malcolm makes precise note of the exits, sightlines and available blunt objects. He asks, very calmly, "What."

"I've cancelled our flights. Or, I told Sam to, and since she's either fuckin' perfect or just responds well to whatever horse tranquilisers you're giving her - okay, okay, you're no' shagging - she's re-sorting them for tomorrow. The red-eye. Breakfast over fuckin'  _Wales_." The way Jamie's leaning in makes his intentions perfectly fuckin' clear, although he does back off slightly after Malcolm hisses that they're in a _public place_. Jamie just grins at him, as if he knows he's fucking irresistible.

Malcolm, with great reluctance, must concede he is.

  
\----

Douglas pulls back Mary's chair. He has, she notes, the diffident, thin-lined look of every emigre man she's seen in Washington. The sun - even its winter cousin - has bleached his hair a millionaire's gold, almost an embarassment (along with the tan that's burnished his ridiculous, English face). Every woman in the restaurant is giving him admiring glances; Mary would hazard a guess that they think she's his wife.

"You look exceptionally well. How's the baby?"

It's the automatic reflex of a pregnant woman - she remembers that on Claire, she found it charming and a little comic. And now, she too performs it, patting her hand against her stomach and smiling. "Round and proud - so Houghton's sister informs me."

Like none of the 'Britisher' cabal, Douglas actually manages to hear Houghton's name without flinching. "He has family up here?"

"No - they visited. Rhode Island. Houghton Sr -- "  Douglas cannot repress a _tiny_ moue of mockery, but, in deference to Mary's raised eyebrows, and sparkling eyes, conceals it, " -- was in the military. They moved around - Georgia, Oregon, Colorado, North Dakota... so you see," she concludes, sounding something like triumphant, "Houghton's never really fitted anywhere, either."

"Oh, come _on_ , Mary," Douglas replies, startled into brusqueness. "That's ridiculous. You're at the very centre of your academic field, you did marvellously whenever - in the political sphere. And Julius always says you were the _queen_ of your year in college."

"I'm surprised you can _remember_ what Julius says."

Douglas would never discuss family matters (the phrase is inappropriate and vaguely absurd - it reminds Mary of a vet's waiting room) in front of a waitress, but his silence is pointed as they receive their menus (although he does, of course, thank the girl). By the time she leaves again, it seems up to Mary to make the next remark.

"I was very sorry to hear about Ben."

Sorrier still to have mentioned him; there seems a palpable flash of grief across his face. Once, she could have studied it coldly, but now this pregnancy has split her heart open. Most people would think it was for the best. She reaches for her hand; Douglas is doing his best to pull himself together.

"It was stupid of me to get involved so soon. And to pick someone who was so ill - yes, I did know. I spent days at the hospital"

Mary feels herself floundering. "We can't choose..."  she begins, but it seems indecent to say that - to Douglas of all people.

"Of course we can. We do." Douglas swallows, hard. "Tell me, Mary, why the hell do you think it was Ben, for me? Did you never see him? No? Well, then, the question was unfair. I'm sorry." Douglas takes a deep breath. His veined hands on the tablecloth are shaking. He's said this to no one. "He reminded me of Julius. That wasn't just it, of course, but - at first. Later I knew the differences, I swear. All the society wives are looking. They think I'm your husband, you know."

"I know."

"They probably think you're telling me the baby's not mine."

"I shall have trouble believing it isn't Malcolm's."

Douglas, freed from the immediate aftermath of confessing sexual designs on his cousin, begins to formulate the question.

"No, of course it's not. He can't." She twists the ruby on her fourth finger. It's blood-red, an old, heavy, stone. Mostly she is adjusting well to the new weight, but she still feels lopsided went typing. "I don't feel I can ever be free of him. It's hard to believe, even now, that anything that comes out of my body - god, I sound like a woman novelist - that I could have a child that, in some way, isn't his."

"Mary," Douglas says, very _very_ gently (Mary wants to point and laugh - he suddenly _is_ Julius, all _gentilesse_ and tact before her), "this isn't a healthy line of thought. Of course the baby is not Malcolm's. He or she -- "

"She," says Mary, and the colour blooms in her cheeks. "Which is partly why I wanted to see you. Darling, I know you're as sane as I used to be about it, and I know it's probably the last thing you feel like. But we're moving quite soon after the birth, and I might not see you to ask before it's time."

Douglas covers her hand, extended across the table. "I'd love to be godfather."

She smiles, and is as beautiful as he's ever seen her. "Good. But you must take care of yourself, Douglas, and give poor Julius a call."

  
\----

  
In sleeping with Malcolm, Jamie has three aims. One: put that scheming, malevolent, cold-cunted bitch out of his mind, forever. Two: ensure Malc becomes so fucking addicted to him that he never wants to think about _anyone_ else. This will save Jamie on prison sentences.

Three: this is a more nebulous aim. It has something to do with wanting to finally see Malcolm's skin flush and his back arch and his face get that ridiculous surprised look Jamie _knows_ he will see in the half-second before Malcolm comes (and Malcolm is going to come, preferably so hard that he passes out and never attempts to leave the bed). The third aim also has quite a lot to do with getting to look Malcolm in the eye and say the word _mine_ , repeatedly, for which the most effective context is undoubtedly pounding Malcolm into the bed.

"I'll be at your room at ten," Jamie tells him, with all the subtlety of a foghorn and all the low cunning of a shark. They're still standing in the reception, Jamie heading off to yet another enormous, terrifying, marathon breakfast of Things Writhing In Seething Animal Fat (mixed with coffee and kippers and the run of the smoking section); Malcolm has just finished the toast and satsuma he can endure before 10. 

Malcolm tells him rather venomously that he's not some puir girl in an Amsterdam window and Jamie can just fucking haud his whisht. Jamie says again he'll be at his room _at ten_ and if Malcolm really objects all he's got to do is not answer the fucking door.

It's the one day they have separate meetings, and Malcolm is relieved to get through it _without_ a smug-eyed midget miming VICTORY at his side. At one point they're in adjoining conference rooms, and Malcolm hears him briefly, shouting through the wall. It's oddly companionable; smirking lizard-like at the delegates while Jamie makes the pictures rattle.

They're reunited at lunchtime for a barrage of calls from London; BBC Makes Stupid MP Look Stupid Shock, some sneezing cattle, and the PM's youngest has nits. Jamie's on a rant with his latest dreadful tourism fact - you can take a black taxi round all the peace walls. Malcolm's weirdly quiet; the MPs needed shepherding to Queen's, where a wee lassie played cello in the Harty Room. She looked seven stone wringing wet, with long dark hair and a furious scowl, and Malcolm felt viciously homesick for his wife, ex-wife.

It doesn't happen all the time, now. But it's the first time Malcolm realises it no longer happens every _day_.

At five past ten, practically hopping, Jamie turns up at Malcolm's room with a look of anguished despair. "Forget the sex," he insists as an opening. "My telly's fuckin' _broke_ , must be all the pay-per-view --" he manages a speeded-up leer, then barrels in with two large whiskies (which the little shit's undoubtedly put on expenses) as well as the baffling editions of Hula Hoops and a Ginsters Scotch egg. This, despite eating cremated steak and seven hundred chips two hours prior.

He looks wide-eyed and anxious, and has apparently forgotten his plan to seduce Malcolm.

However, evoking the blood tie of _Celtic_ , Jamie's next words explain everything.  "Our boy Jock's resigned, he's is on Match o'the Day," he explains, frantic, through a muffled - if urgent -  mouthful, and Malcolm suspects the Scotch egg might originally have been one of a pair. Rolling his eyes, Malcolm lets him in and finds the remote. He doesn't know if he feels furious or relieved - actually, sod that, he wants to know what's happening in Parkhead. He supposes he should be glad Jamie's not actually wearing the shirt.1

Jamie sets the drinks, dumps the food on the bedsheets (Malcolm moves it, of course) and (with a wrenching grip that explains why everything he wears looks like _utter shit_ )2 removes his tie.

Then, kicking off his shoes, he  sprawls on the bed. Glaring at him, Malcolm settles down too, and tries to make the fucking impossible remote scroll to BBC1. When he gets there, it's for the sight of Jennifer Saunders and that _fucking_ Dawn French twatting about in leotards, and not football at all. Malcolm looks mystified before he realises and turns, furious, to the man now sprawling, smugly, on what is undoubtedly _Malcolm's_ side of the bed.

"You stupid fuck," he tells Malcolm fondly, and kisses him.

It is exactly as Malcolm remembers. Jamie crushes their mouths together; Malcolm meets him in seconds, hand in his hair and a painfully possessive grip on his arse, because if the little cunt thinks - if he _thinks_ \- he's got the upper hand in this, Malcolm must disabuse him of the notion. Jamie moans, delightedly, and tries to cant his hips up, in quest of friction or a handjob or _anything_ ;3 when that doesn't work, Jamie shoves _his_ hand between Malcolm's legs and Malcolm bats it away.

Eyes dancing, Jamie retaliates by rolling on top of Malcolm and pressing down against him. The way Malcolm shudders before he objects tells Jamie everything he needs to know.

"Will you just fucking listen to me? I've had enough of seeing you stumble about like some old boy on a park bench." Malcolm opens his mouth to protest at the hypocrisy of this - it was Jamie who got drunk on his doorstep,  but Jamie shakes his shoulder, undeterred. "There is fucking _life_ out there, and as far as you're fucking concerned, it takes the form of me, the minibar, and the enormous fucking orgasm I am going to give you. So lie back and fucking think of Ernest Bevin." He settles himself on his elbows. Malcolm is watching him with wary dislike and accepted defeat and Jamie kisses him, hard. "Except if you think about anyone but me, I'll kill you." There's something zealous in his expression, frighteningly reminiscent of both the madman and the priest.

The next kiss leaves Malcolm looking stunned and fucking beautiful (to Jamie's mind - not that he'd wittingly use such a jessie word), all at once. His hands are suddenly on Jamie's spine, stroking, and an honestly stupefied Malcolm has no idea how they got there. Jamie licks Malcolm's lips for him - Malcolm makes a face of disgust, but doesn't actually stop him: Jamie considers for half a second that possibly Malcolm doesn't realise _how much_ Jamie - and then dismisses it. And bites Malcolm's ear, hard, which earns him a noise so fucking amazing that he carries on until Malcolm yanks him back by the hair and says, that fucking _hurts_. Jamie looks flushed and gleeful and totally unrepentant; when he presses his hips down, Malcolm shuts his eyes and shivers so minutely and exquisitely that parts 2-74 of the Plan are immediately forgotten, in favour of getting Malcolm naked and incoherent as soon as is humanly possible.

As Jamie suspected, Malcolm is on a fucking hair-trigger.

He nearly manages it. After a minute, Malcolm's holding, no _cradling_ the back of Jamie's head and pressing him into the side of his neck - the nearest thing Jamie expects to a direct statement of preference. Greedily, Jamie licks and moans and mutters his appreciation, hand sliding down over and then inside Malcolm's shirt. He's breathing very fast. His skin is hot, angular over ribs, and all the while the tiny mad hamsters in Jamie's brain process new and better information. Malcolm's jaw is very sensitive; Jamie kisses it and he jumps like he's on a hot wire.

He scrapes teeth and tongue over one place and Malcolm says 'Jesus, Jamie' in a tone that makes the words so interchangeable that Jamie's vision actually goes white. He kisses Malcolm's shoulders and chest through the simple expedient of wrenching buttons off shirt; Malcolm's nipples are flushed and biteable and he groans when Jamie gets there, long clever fingers still moving frantically, wonderfully in Jamie's slick hair. And then, something snaps and Jamie has his first taste of what he will come to think of as 'Part 2'; the difference between the sex they have when Jamie pounces and Malcolm allows it, and the sex they have when Malcolm suddenly decides exactly what he wants.

There is nothing, in life, quite the same as suddenly having a sex-starved, adrenaline-fueled Malcolm Tucker shove your clothes off with equal parts intention and fury. Malcolm has apparently decided he's going to get his hands on Jamie everywhere at once; Jamie groans, then _whines_ , and months of shored-up retaliation make themselves _known_ to Malcolm at once. _Kinley_ , Malcolm thinks to himself, biting at Jamie's jawline, tugging hard at his hair. _Andrews_. Watching the little shit stalk around, swaggering; the fucking lunatic idea they'd ever end up with anything else but this. Malcolm decides now: it'll happen, and happen again, and they'll manage to keep it quiet. He drags Jamie's head back by the hair, and mouths along his collarbones.  _Mine._  Not a lot happens - unless you count Jamie's legs jumping and the rest of him going utterly pliant.

Which, on balance, Malcolm does.

Jamie's shirt (a good shirt) is being yanked out of his trousers, pushed high over his stomach (which Malcolm kisses, briefly, determined to get his mouth on that bit of him, at once) and Malcolm has apparently forgotten how a shirt is _made_ , because he's just pulling and pulling on the collar until it rips enough to get Jamie's shoulder bare. Which Malcolm bites. And then licks, and then kisses, over and again, pressing Jamie back into the bed and starting to work his way down the line of ribs and the hair which begins below his navel. He feels overheated and he tastes wonderful. Malcolm puts a hand either side of Jamie's waist, flat to the bed, and pushes shamelessly against Jamie's leg. Those few curling hairs beneath Jamie's navel taste of sweat and honey, and Malcolm presses his face in against the younger man's skin, closes his eyes.

Jamie wants to just grab Malcolm's head, encouragingly, press his hips up for all he's worth (Malcolm grins with this knowledge - Jamie's whoring away at the top of his voice, in a mixture of begging and threat), but he _must stick_ to the original Plan (the zealot again; he's made a promise to his dick and St Peter): using the advantage of SURPRISE, he scrabbles down the bed and flips them over with even better success than he'd expected (he is BRILLIANT).

Malcolm's disconcerted, then back on track, reaching up: there's an awkward, competitive moment of trying to get each other's belts undone first. Malcolm wins, and Jamie laughs, and then's a flicker of amusement in the warm glance Malcolm (half-)covertly sends him. Suddenly elated, Jamie leans in and kisses Malcolm, one hand on his neck, sending them tumbling to their sides.

It's possessive; Malcolm _knows_ it's possessive, which is at least as fucking confusing as Jamie's not wanting a blowjob and Jamie's terrifying strength and - Christ, how hard _is_ the diminutive psycho? - for example, the first time he and Mary did this. Oh fuck, don't think about Mary.

He glances down and sees Jamie watching him, equal parts jealousy and want. _All right,_ he tells himself, _fuckin' THINK about Mary_ , and smashes his mouth down against Jamie's, in an act of defiance, obliterating her - at least for the moment.

Jamie is writhing underneath him, gripping Malcolm's hips and trying to get their legs in the right places, despite being tangled in his own shirt-sleeves. The last clothes get kicked away (Malcolm has to shut the idiot up with a kiss and just _yank_ his trousers down).

Then, a gesture of possession which Malcolm hopes is fucking _unmistakeable_ , Malcolm wraps his arm round Jamie's waist and pulls him flush against him.

They're both naked, and Jamie's eyes are as dark and blown as Malcolm has ever seen them. He looks addicted, which is _good_ because actually both men are singing from the same hymnsheet and that's exactly how Malcolm _wants_ him to feel.

A few seconds later, Jamie's hand finds Malcolm's cock, and it's determined, immediate bliss. Jamie wanks like an adolescent - christ, _Jamie wanking_ \- vistas of endless possibility are opening up before Malcolm, even the ones left unexplored during his nightly, daily wonderings as to whether he could keep from touching Jamie without actually going mad. 

Malcolm's stubbornly biting his lip, aware that every inch of his skin is sweating, starting to flush, and that Jamie's expression (should Malcolm open his eyes) will be one of vicious, unparalleled triumph. He's struggling to hold himself quiet - after a few minutes, Jamie leans in and growls _stop biting your lip, these are very thick fuckin' walls_ , and Malcolm slides a speculative gaze across before putting his hands on Jamie.

Objectively speaking, he _knew_ Mary enjoyed sex with him. It's just that with Jamie, there's no mistaking. It's a bit of a shock - Jamie's making some godawful mewling noise and has his nails in Malcolm's shoulder so hard it may scar. The younger man's babbling stupidly - he doesn't know what he loves most, the actual handjob or the fucking _mindblowing way_ Malcolm's watching him (Malcolm Tucker. Hand on his prick. Looking at him like _that_ ). Honestly, he'd happily just let Malcolm get him off right here, _again_ , but the Great Plan become a sacred fucking _mission_ (Jamie had a lot of scotch while coming up with it - if sober, he'd have found better props and wouldn't be so _fucking nervous_ ) and so, nobly, he removes Malcolm's hand from his cock and tries to remember how language works.

"On your back," he manages, after a second, and to his everlasting surprise, Malcolm obeys.

Jamie shoves his legs about a bit, like an amateur painter bodging a masterpiece, then dips smugly towards Malcolm's stomach, licks it, kneels up. He stretches away from Malcolm, across the bed and into his jacket - Malcolm feels horribly nervous, as if he's reaching for a gag or a camera. This was a lot fucking easier when it was just Jamie rutting mindlessly against him, and various relevant parts of Malcolm's anatomy - including several thousand short-circuited nerve ends are wondering _why the fuck_ that had to stop. Above him, Jamie produces a small bottle with a pump top. It's not even fucking _new_.

"What the fuck," Malcolm asks, and from the complete fog of arousal destroying any sense in Malcolm's eyes, Jamie can tell this is going to be a rhetorical question, "do you think you're doing?"

"Fucking you," grins Jamie, and even Malcolm can't repress a little shudder, but he keeps his face furious.

"For all of thirty seconds," he sneers, looking contemptuously at Jamie's cock. "You'll never last."

"I'll last until you're fucking _begging_ me for it," Jamie retorts, wrenching his wrist from Malcolm's grip and becoming efficient with the lube. Malcolm in no way spreads his legs a little further. Nor does he tilt his hips.

"I wouldn't let you drive my _cars_ ," Malcolm spits, back arching uncontrollably. Jamie keeps licking his hipbones in a way that's slightly animalistic and only _just_ the right side of disgusting in its smugness.

"Not unreasonable, since I lost my licence," he acknowledges, almost fucking _whistling_ as he rolls a neat line of cold gel down over Malcolm's too-sensitive skin. Malcolm's heart is beating so fast it feels almost like panic; he grits his teeth, presses his head against the pillow, tells himself he doesn't care.

It's a relief, giving in. Jamie seems to want him. Actually, Jamie is very vocal on the subject of wanting him. Malcolm is entirely silent on the subject of having wanted Jamie so obsessively for so long that he's now on the kind of hair-trigger more commonly associated with Kosovo and/or incurable psychological diseases.

However, Malcolm is desperate, not stupid. His hand hits Jamie square in the chest.

"Condom."

Jamie gives him a look less intelligent than that of the average tree-climbing, pack-hunting, food-burying cave animal. "You fuckin' what?"

Malcolm looks incredulous. "I don't want your disease-riddled disgusting fucking sorry excuse for a - "

"All right, all fuckin' right," Jamie grumbles, getting off Malcolm with something like bereavement, and rifling through his jacket. Then his trousers. Then his shirt. Then the scattered and half-destroyed clothing pooled elsewhere on the floor. He even checks Malcolm's briefcase and the insides of his shoes, just in case this is some (ha-ha) cock-up staged by Malcolm as a piece of psychological cruelty. Then he sits back on his kneels and lets out a wail that encourages the neighbourhood cats to join in, and calls several devout Muslims to prayer. Then he shouts random, targetless abuse around the room, and Malcolm resolutely does not let his hand stray down to his cock, regardless of how attractive he (apparently) finds Jamie when the latter is both aroused and angry.

Jamie stands back up. Malcolm, cracked out on adrenaline and visceral triumph, is starting to find everything hilarious. Naked  and with drowned blue eyes expressing the grief of nations, Jamie promises (brokenly), "I will find us a condom."

Malcolm smirks. "Planned this one well as well as you usually do."

Jamie voices his rage.

Malcolm purrs, "I think I might go to sleep."

Jamie attempts to rend the heavens. Then he goes back to ripping things open and examining the furniture. "Yeah, well, you're not much fucking use awake, are you? Lying there like a fucking emaciated - Ethiopian - albino _virgin_."

"Hey - hang on a minute, _virgin_?" Malcolm lifts himself up on his elbows. Jamie growls.

"Excluding that malevolent bitch." He waves a hand. "And whatever fucking evil first attempts you managed while you were working your way up to the - "

" - shut your mouth, you stupid bastard. Jesus Christ." Malcolm's face is distorted with rage, morphing to scornful amusement once he calculates that'll hurt Jamie more. "D'ye think you're my - you think you _turned_ me, you arrogant fuck?"  Disarmingly, he laughs. "That's actually quite funny."

"It is _bloody_ not - who?" Jamie bellows, looking for all the world as if he's terrorising the liar in the Select Committee, as opposed to demanding the explicit details of Malcolm's previous sex life. "Which of those fuckers - " he stuffs his shirt into a ball and punches it. "You - all that sanctimonious fucking claptrap about _me_ whoring myself around Westminster, _me_ and you've fucking fucked - well, I'll kill them."

This conclusion seems to reassure him. "I'll go and kill them now. _You_ can stay there." He heads for the door, still naked, and apparently fashioning his shirt into some sort of noose. Malcolm calls after him.

"You don't even know who they _are_ ," he points out, which, Jamie recognises, is a serious impediment to murder.

Jamie halts and comes back, climbing onto the bed. Malcolm can't help feasting his eyes on him; mental, he may be - probably borderline psychotic, at times, and kept only from a prison sentence by a determination to enact Malcolm Tucker's divine will always and everywhere - but he's stunning. And Malcolm's. Finally.

"Right," says Jamie, attempting a face of brisk efficiency, even though he's savagely shredding the bedsheets. "Douglas fucking Lundy."

"Blondie? Don't be ridiculous."

"Harry Seaton. Joss Lewis. Glenn Cullen - fuck, it wasn't Glenn Cullen, was it?"

"No," smirks Malcolm, although that isn't exactly true.

"Hugh Abbot, Nigel Lucock, that fat kid from Health?"

"You don't know them. Jesus Christ, Jamie, I'm not as fucking _stupid_ as you." Jamie launches himself at him, and Malcolm swings, catching his wrists and dragging both down to the bed. Jamie is shouting endlessly about how he'll fucking crucify _anyone_ who looks at Malcolm, and Malcolm's rolling on top of him.

"You don't know them because I always made perfectly fucking sure they wouldn't come back to haunt me."

"Yeah, well, I'll be fucking haunting you soon as I've fucking strangled you," Malcolm might be alarmed by this garbled and nonsensical threat, were it not muttered against his chest (Jesus, is Jamie's compulsion to touch him some sort of fucking problem? And when exactly will it stop feeling like fucking heroin, every time he does?). Also, the anguished, desperate "fuck, I _just want to come_ " indicates where Jamie's priorities currently lie. Malcolm smirks through closed lips, then presses them to Jamie's hair, reducing the diatribe to an ongoing mutter.

Malcolm is nothing if not a Machiavellian, scheming, underhand bastard, however, so after a few seconds, the caressing hand slides significantly lower and Jamie starts to plead and swear and thrust into his hands.

"Condom," says Malcolm silkily, and Jamie tries to kill him with a pillow.

Three minutes later, wearing Malcolm's shirt, his own trousers and shoes, no socks and Malcolm's prized overcoat (about which they will have _words_ ), Jamie heads off into the darkness looking like a poorly-swaddled terrorist, shouting back the express intention of "fucking torching Mr Boots and his bumchums at Superdrug."

Malcolm takes the opportunity to order room service.

"You've got food, why've you got food?" Jamie asks, returning fifteen minutes later with an ominous paper bag. Malcolm dabs his lips delicately with a napkin.

"The chef does really good Asian fusion --" He glares at the bag. "Jesus, did I tell you to find a chemist from the fuckin' 1960s?"

" -- yeah, yeah, bollock food," insists Jamie, upending a frankly improbable number of condoms onto the bed. "Couldnae find a fucking Boots, had to go to the gents' loo on Berwick Street - it's all fucking right," he insists, Malcolm having skidded back up the bed in an excess of holy horror. "They're sealed. Get your kit off."  Grabbing a handful of vermicelli, Jamie strips off - a handful, Malcolm shudders, wondering if he can really be about to let this inbred slumbrat _rodent_ anywhere near the fucking temple of his clean, disease-free body. Then Jamie's fully naked again and Malcolm decides that he is.

When Malcolm dawdles over his dressing gown, Jamie straddles him and just removes it, then pins him down with an assumed dominance that Malcolm really, really doesn't want to find quite so arousing. When Malcolm bites his underlip, Jamie growls and bites back, and when Jamie starts on _again_ with a litany of vicious invective against whichever fucking cunts have had unwarranted prior access to Malcolm's cock, arguing back bluffs the moment of panic when Jamie starts fucking him on his fingers.

The little shit is evidently a well-practiced little shit because he gets Malcolm breathless and incoherent in a timespan that would be frankly _humiliating_ were it not for the fact that (every time he can manage to open his eyes without actually _begging_ ), Jamie is open-mouthed and wild-eyed, looking at Malcolm with an expression that suggests he thinks the latter is God Almighty. To whom Jamie keeps referring, in blasphemous gasps, when he finally manages to hold still long enough to line up behind Malcolm and slowly thrust in.

Malcolm has one desperate moment of knowing Jamie's won, because unless it's some phenomenal trick of the light or crushed-up poppers in his teryaki, this feels fucking fantastic and he's drowning. He knows he's not quiet. He frankly can't be. Bony fingers are digging into Jamie's shoulders, and Malcolm's derisory prediction about Jamie's stamina seems close to being justified - Jamie's muttering with his eyes closed, legs twitching. Malcolm stares at him, at the sheen on his face and the curls wet around the temples. Then Jamie moves, and they both swear, and Malcolm forgets to do anything except lock legs and arms around his sides.

Jamie has drugged him. It's the only explanation. Malcolm grabs a fistful of dark hair and drags Jamie's face back down to his, smashing their mouths together and, incidentally, nearly scalping Jamie as Jamie tries to achieve aim 3 (see above) by forcing eye contact and choking out a muffled 'Mine' a few seconds later, teeth sliding over Malcolm's neck. Malcolm makes a noise that's incriminatingly close to a sob (Jamie hears _fuck, jesus_ and then what had better be his own name), head falling back against the pillow, back arching as he climbs closer and closer and closer. Jamie hasn't even touched him yet, a staggering omission he immediately rectifies, and Malcolm whimpers, mutters _faster, harder_ so that Jamie gets an inkling and responds, body slick with sweat and still moving inside him, fucking him for a few more seconds before he's broken in half, and comes, head falling forward against Jamie's shoulder, hands on Jamie's back and neck.

He is dimly aware of Jamie's orgasm, thrust out with more urgency than finesse, and Jamie's heavy body coming to rest against his chest. And then of Jamie's damp hair, skin, one warm arm across his. He tastes of sex, and sweat, and the aftershave Malcolm smells every day at work. After a few seconds, Jamie lifts his head and gives Malcolm an exhausted, bleary look of mixed concern and approval. Satisfied he hasn't killed Malcolm or scarred him psychologically, he kisses the nearest bit of Malcolm's skin (indeterminate neck/collarbones) and puts his head back down. Malcolm recognises the warning signs. "Get off, you're not falling asleep - "

"Fucking _am_ ," Jamie counters, rolling the bare minimum away and dragging Malcolm with him. "Unless you'll let me have a cigarette."

"Which I fucking won't," Malcolm manages, despite the fug of adrenalin and exhaustion obscuring his brain.

Jamie finds his mouth for a messy kiss. The smugness is setting in again. "Tell me I'm not the best you've ever fucking had."

It's only the immediate effects of sex, but Malcolm hesitates slightly too long, and Jamie jumps him again like there's any possibility of Round 2, taking some minutes to be fended off. When he is, he settles, grinning, into the crook of Malcolm's arm (Malcolm is _still kissing him,_ which is probably some sort of _sexual Tourette's_ , Malcolm privately decides), certain of his own brilliance.

Jamie having shagged his way across Westminster, Malcolm would cheerfully give himself a colostemy rather than ask the same question back. Jamie tells him anyway, because he's feeling fucking generous and even if Malcolm's currently reacting to him like a half-starved sex addict dying for his next fix, before very long at all, Jamie's sure it'll be absolutely true. He revels in the momentary look of astonishment on Malcolm's face (seen after all, even if the timing went wrong), then drags both Malcolm's arms around him.

The stupid fucker stays awake _worrying_ about something - in the darkness, Jamie can almost hear the frenetic clatter of his thoughts. Not to be deterred, Jamie shoves his face into Malcolm's neck, silently says his prayers, and passes out. He keeps his arm around Malcolm all night.

  
\----

  
Julius is in his striped pyjamas again, tucked up with A. Trollope and fulminating above the half-closed book. Tokyo will be on the phone in the morning. Sleep, like smoke, is moving up his body and through him; he reluctantly marks his page, and lies down - but not before taking note, as always, of the time it will be in Washington. His alarm clock glows eerily in the half-light. On America's East Coast, it is twenty-two minutes past seven.

Julius's phone rings a few moments later; occasionally love is its own reward.

  
\---------

  
1Jamie has all the shirts. ALL OF THEM. His love for Celtic competes, in a nebulous, uneasy way, with his love for Real Things like God, his kids, and Jolson. Buying more shirts is the only thing to do. Anyone who doesn't, he maintains, is a fucking fairweather Rangers bender, to be subjected to endless choruses of his own personal football song, "fuck Rangers up the fucking arse, then kick them til they die". Only Malcolm is exempt from this.

2Jamie's sartorial standards continue to infuriate Malcolm. They also - dimly, and at second-hand - _distress_ Julius Nicholson, who would quite see what Malcolm sees in Jamie, were he aware that Malcolm were seeing it. Whenever 'James' is in motion, he induces nothing in Julius so much as inordinate terror and the revulsion he feels for dangerous dogs. When James is siting still or standing quietly - not often, but on Remembrance Sunday, Select Committees, and whenever he's the safe, catatonic kind of bored - Julius reflects on what a nice arse he has. Julius likes to pretend his feeling for Malcolm is more cerebral; although, certainly, he's dazzled by the man's wit, he's actually mostly interested in _fingers_ and _neck_ and quasi-worrying fantasies about _feeding him breakfast_.

3Jamie has a list of activities they can undertake, in future. However, he has One Aim And One Aim Only, for tonight. ....so he thinks.


	6. but you're gonna have to serve somebody

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malcolm and Jamie fly back to London to a day of cock-ups, with Malcolm determined to avoid a scandal for himself. When a peer goes on record sounding "a bit Nazi", a Dumfries PFI-er needs his bollocks chopping, Hugh Abbot is a shit and Jamie has porn negatives, there's plenty of chaos, and reasons for Malcolm to be on his knees. Jamie, however, is interested in just one of them. Meanwhile, Julius Nicholson is a terrible housewife, and Mary makes one final bid for amity with her former husband. Along the way, Malcolm corrupts a postman, Malcolm's driver listens to the radio, Sam is amused, and Douglas falls victim to trans-Atlantic drift.

Houghton, so Mary erroneously thinks, is the least complicated person she's ever met (as Douglas once, when soused, remarked, he's certainly the least complicated person she's ever _married_ ). He actually understands why his pregnant wife wants to contact Malcolm in the weeks prior to the birth of their first (but not only) child. 'Understands', that is, beyond attributing the impulse to his now egg-shaped wife's load of hormones. Her face is red and her ankles are becoming swollen.

Houghton suggests she writes a letter. She does. She doesn't quite know how to sign it. The baby is going to be a girl; the first in Houghton's family for two generations. The letter arrives the day after Malcolm leaves Belfast for London.

\---

They fly home at dawn (Jamie leers at the stewardess and keeps his elbow propped against Malcolm's) and arrive at work around eleven with little or no sign of any change between them. Except that Jamie's tie is rather better-tied than usual, and his shirt looks new.

Malcolm is, as ever, a masterpiece of anaemic style and grace, and he gives Sam a tired little smile (and a quick rush of his usual charm) before proceeding to the first business of the day. He's trying to belie a gnawing anxiety about whether Jamie is going to tell anyone, whether Jamie's going to fuck him again, or whether he, Malcolm, was just on the little shit's checklist. Again, he's slightly anxious that someone's having him secretly filmed.

The first time Malcolm and Mary slept together, there was a definite moment at which they agreed to do it again, at some unspecified but imminent date. With Jamie, there'd been merely a smug, naked Scotsman in three stages, none of which included discussion. First: Jamie, half-awake, sprawled across Malcolm as if the latter were Jamie's personal territory. This had been terrible for Malcolm, who, since the early hours, had been lying awake watching Jamie's sleeping head as if it were an unexploded bomb. When Jamie eventually forced himself into life, it was with a soft groan of complaint and much burrowing into Malcolm's shoulder. As if on reflex, Malcolm's hand had come up to stroke his hair, and they'd ended up kissing before any rules and boundaries could be established.

Second: once awake (balcony for a smoke), Jamie had chatted endlessly about work, with all his usual enthusiasm for fighting the good fight and burying the bodies wherever Malcolm deemed necessary. He'd gone out to the nearest place (Debenhams; Malcolm fucking _winced_ , if they were going to do it again, there would have to be some fucking sartorial _changes_ ) for a new shirt like a lamb.

Thirdly, after behaving at the airport, he'd mauled Malcolm in the car with maximum discretion and superlative confidence, as if it had become his inalienable right to do so. Now, the little shit's strutting about like he owns the world and has recently had his dick sucked. This last bit is not the case, however, and it's all Malcolm can do not to think of it.

Malcolm thinks he might be being very fucking stupid. It's his first weakness in years, but it only ever takes one.

He does a very good job of masking these various neuroses until (almost) lunchtime, when he stalks next-door to the Press Office, sees Jamie laughing with some cretinous fuck of a PFI-funder (it later turns out he's from Dumfries), and wants nothing, _absolutely nothing_ more than to stamp on the interloper's head. Possession, civilised and trained by a feminist wife,1 has re-reared its ugly head, sex having exacerbated rather than assuaged his various urges to hunt and kill. Malcolm realises he wants the bollocks of anyone who dares to look Jamie's way. And then to bend Jamie over the nearest desk.

Jamie doesn't even notice him. Malcolm goes back to _his_ office with ears full of blood, demands the cretinous PFI shit's _name_ and tells his beloved PA to start fucking said PFI-shit over in a variety of small but perfectly formed administrative manoeuvres. Sam's eyebrows have, during the events of the morning, become supremely eloquent; Malcolm tries, but more or less fails, to glare her into submission. Jamie wanders back through a few minutes later to see if he can crash the Guardian briefing because they do fucking fantastic samosas; Malcolm looks at him with deadly hate and Sam (trying not to just laugh and laugh) remembers some diary-checking in the other room.    


\--- 

  


"What's the fucking matter?"

Malcolm looks incredulously at the arms snaking round his waist. He endures them all of two seconds before elbowing Jamie in the chest and locking the office door. "You stupid prick," he hisses, "anyone could come in here."

"Me, for one," Jamie says, supremely unconcerned, and wandering round the edge of Malcolm's desk. "I could blow you while you were sitting here." Malcolm stares at him with wide-eyed horror.

"That's a fucking _antique_ ," he splutters, face full of spitting disgust, "Not a fucking sex toy. Jesus Christ, Jamie - are you fuckin' listening to me? - nothing like that is going to happen at work. Ever. It'd be suicide."

The shorter man looks mulish. "What's the point of _having_ a fucking desk - fine, you're a fucking obsessive-compulsive repressed emotional _leper_ , what's wrong?"

Malcolm keeps glaring. He somehow cannot formulate any words to insultingly but effectively convey the imminent doom laid out for stupid blond young fuckers whom Jamie looks at. And now Jamie is fucking look at _him_ as if he's the psychomental mad one, and, for Christ's sake, Malcolm is beginning to look back on just being obssessed with Jamie with relative fondness. Albeit from a position of rapidly complicating lunacy. Jamie sighs.

"What time do you want me round tonight?"

"What makes you think I even want you _round_? One mediocre fuck - " Jamie just looks amused, at this, and Malcolm is going to bounce his thick skull off a two-hundred-year-door for the presumption, " - and you think you're fucking moving in? I don't want your fucking junkie flotsam all over my home, you fucking _vagrant._ "

Jamie takes a step closer, smirking up into Malcolm's face. "I want you," he says smugly, "to let me come in your mouth." He pauses for the time it takes Malcolm's brain to go blank. "Now, let that puir wee girl come back in and finish her filing, it's one-thirty and not all of your loyal fucking subjects have managed a lunchbreak."

Malcolm really wishes Jamie hadn't juxtaposed the image of coming his mouth with that of Sam going for lunch. It makes it difficult to concentrate, and he guiltily avoids Sam's gaze for (almost) the rest of the day. The almost is there because, at six, some extraordinarily benevolent gentleman at the FT (or, alternatively, one who is relying on Malcolm to keep certain polaroids well-hidden) rings through to ask whether Malcolm is aware that Lord Collinge, new peer for New Labour's new government, has, in interview, compared the EU to the Third Reich. Malcolm, in a startling omission which leads to the least Scottish member of the Press Department clearing his desk ten minutes later, has not been informed of this. _And_ it's the first day in three thousand fucking years that Julius Baldybuck has called in sick. This is a positive liability since, unless his brief is diagnosing drug addictions at fifty paces, dealing pragmatically with the House of Lords is _not Jami'e strong_ point.

  


  


The resulting shit storm ("Do you know fucking difficult it is to unfrock one of these fat fucks?") lasts until the last minute of News At Ten, when, finally, Malcolm concedes that he's buried enough hatchets in enough soft journalistic flesh to keep the story quiet until morning (by which time Lord Windbag, who seems to have mistaken 'New' for 'Klu', as in 'Klu Klux Klan' will have regretfully tendered his resignation in order to spend more time with his gout). Malcolm ends the day at eleven, bone-tired but still keyed up enough to notice that that _fucker_ from the FCO has been hanging round Jamie's desk for much too long.

He has sent Sam home (past the poor girl's bedtime - christ, she is young, Malcolm actually feels a bit disgusting in comparison, even if she is terrifyingly fucking efficient), and the Mafia are drifting away to their various celebratory boltholes. Jamie is drinking Diet Coke (he only drinks beer, Glennfidditch, coffee, and Coke) and laughing at some fucking uninteresting joke. On a lesser occasion, Malcolm might feel the pang of jealous paranoia that will (invariably) sneak up on him once he and Jamie have fucked a few more times: he is too old for Jamie, and, more importantly, Jamie now has enough blackmail material on Malcolm to ensure his complete compliance in whatever steps Jamie takes to further his career. Tonight, however, he has just enough adrenaline and just enough annoyance to walk forward, glare, and send little _Tristram_ scuttling.

Jamie is looking stupidly high on his own cleverness, and caffeine. Malcolm gives him an irritable glare and says he's not sharing the car but he can come round in thirty minutes. But not to bother if it's more than forty-five, because he, Malcolm, isn't staying up that long. And that Jamie won't be in work tomorrow if he fucks any of this up, nor will he be staying the night. Jamie grins back that he'll go and buy a toothbrush.

  


  


\----

  


  


Mary's baby is a healthy, shouting girl with her father's olive skin, black hair and black eyes. She's ruddy and rounded and entirely free from deficiencies or defects. Although even a twenty-hour labour couldn't rob Mary of sanity and/or basic biological knowledge, she's relieved when she sees the baby's  dark hair and face. Nothing like Malcolm, although, of course, she was never _going_ to be. Falling asleep in her private room, New York muffled by thick drapes that disguise the noise of the city skyline, Mary feels sorrier for him than she ever has - with Abigail cooing gently in the cradle, this is greater happiness than he'll ever know.

Malcolm walks out of Downing Street past all the portraits of statesmen and conmen and other people who managed to die in office and tries to balance the rational benefits of drowning himself against just crushing Jamie against wall or bed and getting to feel him come. The awful heroin-feeling is back. Malcolm actually has several family members (different surnames, thank fucking god, and none of them legitimate) who've died of drugs, and it's not a tradition he wishes to continue.

When he gets home, he feels an idiot for telling Jamie to come round there - Jamie's only been there once, for that awful _engagement_ party, then twice or three times more for late-night plotting, Old Firm games and other occasions on which Jamie tried to have sex with him. But then, booking into a hotel room would be hardly less suspicious, and Malcolm has a holy fucking horror of the rat's nest Jamie's acquired to sleep in. It's still made of ash and hair, still overlooked by flashers, and _still_ located on the wrong fucking side of Shepherd's Bush.

Malcolm drinks quite a lot of scotch while he waits.

Forty minutes later, he hears somebody having a fight with a taxi driver. Rolling his eyes, Malcolm begins planning the fucking eloquent speech by which he'll win the PM's retrospective approval for an American-style firearms killing on the doorstep, when Jamie comes barrelling in in that fucking anorak and smelling of rain. He tastes like rain too, Malcolm realises, on the sofa seconds later with a hurricane's worth of wet Jamie Macdonald, and his whisky tumbler abandoned on the floor.

Malcolm has no idea how he so rapidly ended up with the remote control stuck in his back and Jamie's knee between his thighs, but in a flash of memory he recalls that this was exactly the kind of treacherous ambush he suffered _last night_ , grabs a painful handful of curls, and hauls Jamie back until he can see all of the little bastard's face, flushed and wincing. His eyes are fixed lower than Malcolm's, and glancing down, Malcolm realises that _somehow_ , half his shirt has been undone. His tie is significantly loosened, but he did that himself. Jamie's tie is back to string-chewed wonkiness, and Malcolm would quite like to hang him by it.

"Up," he says, giving the dark curls a yank, and Jamie, disoriented but not sorry, obeys. "Go and stand by the bookcase."

"Which, you've got enough of the stupid fuckers." Jamie turns around, craning. "Is this what that Welsh cunt means by 'built-in'?"2

"Take that _stupid fucking_ anorak off. It wants burning. You look like a fucking _Ofsted_ Inspector."

Jamie grins, shrugs it off (removing an M&S shirt-in-a-packet, now somewhat crumpled, from the lining) and dumps it, wetly, on a sofa. This leads to a short but spirited argument (it's like fucking house-breaking a _pet_ , something Malcolm has never ever wanted to do, having a near-pathological horror of dogs and an asthmatic allergy to fur) but eventually Jamie is leaning up against the bookcase and Malcolm is leaning against him. The smell of the rain is still curling round the room, and - with all the lights on - Malcolm has a brief frisson of horror that their silhouettes might be visible, movie-style, outside. To journohacks and murderers. On impulse, he leans past Jamie (trying not to shudder at the warmth and heat of him) and flicks a switch in the alcove; the lights dip. "What'd you do that for?"

Malcolm bites his ear, and Jamie shivers. Then he tries licking it, and Jamie's knees all but buckle. An arm goes round his waist, supporting; Malcolm's knees are bent to match his. Malcolm keeps on, clever and perceptive, and Jamie doesn't give a fuck about the noises he makes.

When he moves away, a hand comes out and catches Malcolm's hip. Malcolm counters it with a hand on Jamie's tie.

Jamie is looking up at him with plainly readable lust. Malcolm's expression, as ever, gives away nothing.

Spreading the hand so his fingers splay over Jamie's chest, he keeps Jamie still while he undoes his belt and trousers - and then, as an afterthought, flicks open the top few buttons of Jamie's shirt.

Jamie pushes his hips up and gets nothing. Malcolm watches with almost clinical curiosity Jamie's reactions as Malcolm slides fingers inside his shirt, to where the skin is soft and feverish. He remembers how Jamie tasted last night; now, he leans in and bites, just for a second, at the hollow of his throat. It's the same as crushing a flower; the scent of Jamie's everywhere, Malcolm's face against his neck - but Malcolm's not so distracted that he doesn't notice the hands starting to come up and undo his shirt.

He snatches them away and glares. "I'm giving you the fucking blowjob."

"Yeah, and I want you undressed for it."

He smacks the hand again, and pins it, wrist caught, to the shelf. "You don't get a say." Jamie's eyes gleam; he's always loved a challenge. "I don't _give_ blowjobs."

"You're giving one to me," Jamie points out, spreading his legs a little wider, and canting his hips. He is nothing if not helpful. "And you're fucking going to love it." He's not sure what response he expects, exactly, but being slammed back against the bookcase and kissed, then held by his hair, is one of the best. He sees Malcolm's eyes narrowed in what is either fury or arousal, as he slides his hand inside Jamie's pants and starts to stroke him, Jamie now more or less whimpering and totally unable (or unwilling) to move. And then, Malcolm is dropping to his knees in front of him and if it wasn't for Jamie reflexively opening his eyes on a gasp, he might have missed it. It is the single most glorious thing he's ever seen (the single best noise Malcolm's ever heard is the one Jamie makes - part groan, part supplication - when Malcolm presses down on his hips and takes Jamie's cock into his mouth).

  


  


\----

  


  


Julius Nicholson is a very, _very,_ even an _exceptionally_ tidy person, but he has not had to clean his _own house_ for some years, and he is quite _monstrously_ afraid he might just have ruined the hall carpet.

  


  


Which was an heirloom.

  


  


The grandfather clock, of which he is usually so _fond_ , and on which he has lavished years of loving care and a pedant's quest for perfection, strikes the hour. Julius thinks he might be having a seizure. He _has been told_ , and he has every intention of _following orders_ , (he wouldn't usually, but he won't run the risk of anything that smashes what seems like a waking dream - he doesn't _dare_ ), he thinks he might _just once again check_ the times of the buses (safer, anonymous) to Terminal 5, Heathrow.

  


  


Oh _god_ , something in the oven is _burning_.

  


  


\----

Malcolm's head is bent, concentrating - he starts slightly when Jamie slides a hand over his hair, then shudders as the hand takes hold and starts to grip, lending strength to the their rhythm. When Malcolm looks up, his triumph momentarily overwhelms his own need: Jamie's mouth his open, and his eyes are shut, and the hand not fisting Malcolm's hair is useless at his side, unaware that Malcolm is watching him with clever, possessive eyes. Jamie's head falls back against the bookshelves, and - as Malcolm has predicted, though it makes him shudder _again_ , and redouble his movements - he begins to whimper, then to beg.

Malcolm could take all his secrets this way, all of them. Jamie's helpless, between that clever mouth and the hand on his balls, pressing further and further, then breaking off completely - and this is the time the air _really_ turns blue - for Malcolm to lick along his hipbone, stomach, the crease of his thigh. Jamie is close to shouting, and trying desperately to drag Malcolm's mouth back where he wants it, where he _needs_ it - but Malcolm's eyes are waiting for a confession so Jamie gives in, fucks his hips forwards and concedes, uselessly, that this - that _Malcolm_ \- is the best he's ever had. Malcolm is sitting back on his heels and is in close personal league with Satan. He smirks up at Jamie from beneath lowered eyelashes, and while Jamie is left to goggle at the unlikelihood - and fatal efficiency - of that expression on Malcolm's face, Malcolm leans forwards and resumes destroying Jamie's mind with his mouth.

He keeps his eyes on Jamie throughout; Malcolm won't let him come til he's tasted every inch of him. He's never wanted anyone like this in his _life_ , waking fantasies that have made him come harder - come harder, well, than a middle-aged man should. He presses one finger back and up and revels in just how hard Jamie whimpers, how willingly he opens his legs. Then Jamie glances down and there's something feral in those eyes which gives Malcolm pause; Jamie grips his hair more tightly and the whole thing hangs on a knife-edge until Malcolm presses his tongue just _so_ , and Jamie keens.

He has to bring his hand up to help, because the little shit can't keep his legs or his hips still as he gets closer, but, fuck, it's addictive; in imagination he's sinking to his knees in front of Jamie a thousand times, and were that not good enough, Jamie's found his voice, and is offering a litany of messages part supplication, part promise. Malcolm would smirk at the unfettered arrogance of Jamie's assurance that he'll 'fuck Malcolm til he fucking screams', but he's distracted by the promise, here-and-now, of 'come in your _fucking_ mouth'.

It's not right to want Jamie quite as much as he does. Not fuckin' right, but he pushes that thought to the back of his mind, shuts his eyes tightly and sucks, and swallows, and holds Jamie still as he comes. He can hear his own name, and a half-broken array of profanities, and then (as he swallows, shuddering, and gingerly removes Jamie's cock from his mouth), Jamie slides down the bookcase, fitting into the space between Malcolm, and the shelves. Jamie's blue eyes look dark in the half-light, and his face seems full of blood. Malcolm leans in, shakily, and Jamie wraps an arm around his shoulders, keeping Malcolm between his bent knees. They sit there, Malcolm curled forward, Jamie holding him, forehead to forehead with Malcolm's breathing no less ragged than Jamie's own. Eyes sliding shut, Jamie kisses him (curious, nearly avaricious) and Malcolm cannot stifle a moan. "Bed," Jamie tells him, a moment later, and Malcolm makes his acquiescence against Jamie's cheek.

\----

Julius's house is still empty at midnight. Apart from him, of course, which really - given the ruined dinner, and the spoiled rug - absolutely _does not count_.

He is reading _Othello_. Again. Without really seeing the words.

\----  
   
Hours later, they fall asleep, Jamie's body against his, and Malcolm (at least) on the edge of the utterly stupid knowledge that they have to get up at fucking early o'clock tomorrow. Jamie isn't fussed. He keeps kissing Malcolm's neck and chest in a way Malcolm just cannot comprehend, but which he knows he ought to find intensely disturbing. Jamie has said _again_ that he'll kill anyone Malcolm looks at. Malcolm's wishing he had a different mattress, and that he'd thought to lie on the other side, so that Jamie isn't now curled exactly where Mary used to be. Except Mary never sent him to bed quite this exhausted, nor quite so thoroughly spattered with come. The darkest hour, just before dawn, has sucked the guttering streetlight from beneath the windows, and Malcolm's once-marital bedroom is the sensory deprivation chamber he's always cultivated. Except for Jamie, muttering in his sleep, whom Malcolm holds protectively, in the dark.

\-----

"I'm sorry," says Douglas, once Julius has shut off the burglar alarm and pacified Lady Alconbury, next door. "But your doorbell is broken and you didn't seem to hear my knocking and I'd be grateful if you'd find a towel because I _am_ bleeding rather badly. Climbing in was _not_ one of my better ideas."

"It must have been the rain - your poor _trousers_. And your knee," he amends, cross with himself for letting the _practicalities_ all escape him, in the unnerving situation. Douglas drips blood onto the (ruined, now twice-ruined) carpet while Julius fetches the _proper first aid kit_ ; Douglas switches on a lamp, Julius tends to him, Julius notices he's got thinner and swarthier and that there are lights in his hair nothing _acceptable_ can have put there. Douglas keeps apologising; Julius keeps disclaiming any need for an apology. Douglas suggests he take Lady Alconbury flowers in the morning - Julius's mind hangs on to that simple word, _morning morning_ and apart from that they barely listen to each other, too shocked at just being in the same room. Julius gets up from his undignified position on the carpet as soon as he can. Douglas looks travel-stained and careworn, all grubby gilt and marred edges, and quite like he might fall asleep on his feet.

"I couldn't bear the thought of going away again. I don't want to work at the Embassy."

"I know," says Julius.

"I don't want to work for them. I don't want to go back to the Foreign Office, either. I only know the one thing I _do_ want."

"I know," says Julius, fervently. "And if I didn't before, I'd be an idiot not to, now, wouldn't I?"

 A little while later, Douglas recovers his voice enough to ask about the scorchmarks on Uncle Phillip's Persian rug. Julius says something that, in the code of the Nicholsons, is _personal blasphemy_ , pushes Douglas down _onto_ the carpet, and kisses him again.

\----

As any Briton can tell you, the conglomeration formerly known as Royal Mail deliver letters in a floating window between ten a.m. and four in the afternoon. Malcolm, via a series of negociations best unmentioned but perhaps suggested by a mindful consideration of the evocative words 'injunction', 'Redcar', 'prostitute' and 'enquiry' had contrived to have all his inviolate correspondence delivered before he left the house, every day, until Glenn Cullen shagged a woman and Satan himself was found dead in a chair with icicles on his nuts. He wa going through his post at the sideboard, wincing through black coffee (it wasn't even _light_ yet) and plotting the murder of Jamie, about to become _so late_ that they would _have_ to take the same car. Jamie was on his way downstairs, sucking desperately on an unlit cigarette (smoking in the house was good for _one fuck only_ , and they were now on their _fourth_ ) and doing up something that Malcolm wouldn't realise was _his shirt_ until he registered the symptoms of a minor coronary during Cabinet. Malcolm had already made his peace with the sounds of Jamie raping his bathroom and leaving it to die.

Jamie was dismayed when biting Malcolm on the back of the neck got no response. "What? _What_ \- fine, don't fucking show me, but _explain_."

"Mary's having a bairn."

Jamie paused in tying his tie round the chairback. "D'ye think that's funny? I'll fucking _lamp_ \- "

"It's no' _mine_ , dickhead," said Malcolm. Jamie realised, with a sudden spike of sympathy, that the auld fucker looked appalling. Jamie could understand. He had, himself, produced three hearty, healthy children, received into the Holy Catholic Church and bearing the unmistakeable traits of wedlock and paternity.3 Plus, the fat fuckin' rabid bitch was off in _America_ , thousands of miles away from Malcolm. And even if -  _Malc_ wasnae stupid enough to voluntarily raise a bairn that wasnae - _ha_ , thought Jamie, will a little stab of disloyal, triumphant glee, the Holy War is _won_.

He pushed the chair out of the way and went back to the counter, wrapping his arms around the fission of sinew, malice and bodily venom that made up Malcolm Tucker.

" _Fuck_ her. 4 Come on. It's 5-a-side tonight and isn't it today we cut off the Home Secretary's great wizened horsecock and try and send him on _Newsnight_ not looking like a coke-snorting, kid-snapping psycho? With spades for hands? ...Malc?"

"Aye." Malcolm put down the letter. Of all the things he didn't want to do, gaze at Jamie was suddenly top of the list. He'd gone horribly grey. Not releasing the considerable grip on Malcolm's waist, Jamie narrowed his eyes and pushed him back against the drawers.

"What, do you want to go over and _see_ it?"

That earned him an angry flash of malarial-blue eyes. Jamie was merciless. "Buy it a little fuckin' blue crack pipe or bag of pink fluffy vomit for when it grows up into the ball of fuckin' _psycho_ any brat of hers and that big toothy cunt -- WELL STOP LOOKING SO FUCKIN' MISERABLE, then. Malc."

"God, you're a fuckin' _charming_ houseguest, aren't you, and did you _break_ my fuckin' shower?"

"What, that thing you imported straight from the Nazi deathcamps? I didn't know whether I was washing or being stripped for fuckin' parts - are you this much of a masochist _normally_ , or is there something about being _jetwashed_ in the end of an abbatoir that fuckin' _does_ it for you?"

Malcolm had his emaciated, sleep-deprived, furious face only inches from Jamie's own. The caffeine levels in his blood had only recently begun to rise, and Jamie could see him moving from 'slow steady bubble' to 'seething with rage'. "Maybe I _should_ fuckin' go and see her."

"Aye," bellowed Jamie, "and if you do, there's a fucking _gaylord_ in Defence, I used to sit on his fucking _face_ , and since I've got the fucking negatives I think he'll be _pretty fucking keen_ to _shoot your plane_ out of the _fucking sky_ into a big atomic FIREBALL that TAKES OUT AMERICA and -- "

Jamie's eyes opened endearingly wide as his skull hit the cupboard. Gripping the sideboard, Malcolm leaned further and further towards him, bypassing notions of personal space until his eyes were fully engaged with the darker and more appalling depths of Jamie's soul, those that the younger man would have preferred to keep secret. He looked, to Jamie's mind, exactly like stinging and colourless on a seabed would look, right after it made the decision to stab you.

"There are - fucking _negatives_ of you, with _other men_?"

Jamie squirmed slightly, but he managed to keep his tone challenging. "Some of them weren't too bad."

A terrible spasm seemed to go through Malcolm. He spoke as one still lurking in the depths. "I will _not be late_ for work for this." A hand forestalled Jamie's attempt to grip his shirt. Malcolm was having to repress _tremors_ with the need for deliberation. After a second, his body relaxed, though, and Jamie couldn't quite bite back a howl of disappointment. "Shut up. We go via yours, get the fuckin' - no, can't take them into _work_ , jesus christ, we burn them _there_ , you will get the _fucking Tube_ into yours - which, considering the _shithole_ you've decided to live in, should take about five hours and will _hopefully_ get you stabbed, and _then_ ," Malcolm pauses, breathing hard, keeping his face completely blank so the little shit doesn't think he's gained _anything_ like an advantage, "if you manage to get through the day without psychotically destroying any aspect of the British Government - you know _, glassing_ the Home Secretary or putting a bullet through the kneecaps of the Minister for Health - I'll see you in my office and we can _discuss_ exactly _why_ you thought you had the right to come in late today."

Jamie gazed at Malcolm as if the latter were God not on the Seventh Day but at the Second Coming, flanked in this case not by a triumphal march of angels but by a crowd of a thousand, shimmering, terrified fat cats and advisors. It was a vision Malcolm often had himself.

"You're a _fucking genius_ ," he breathed, and kissed Malcolm, emphatically, just as the Downing Street chauffeur pulled up. Malcolm had, of course, sufficient foresight to keep the curtains shut (he'd also been into the spare room and chucked the duvet about, just in case Westminster blew up today and some hack invaded to research a 'biography'). He raised an eyebrow.

"All we'll do in the office is _discuss_ ," he warned, collecting his case. Jamie, slinging his briefcase (a fucking _terrible briefcase_ ) in hand with all the joy of Jack the Ripper when toting his little shiny stabbing knives, affected a look of grave professionalism.

"Of course. But as for the -- " Malcolm, through sheer force of will, managed to totally block and _instantly forget_ Jamie's inevitable, porn-film metaphor about _disciplinary action_ on the way home. It was at moments like this that he genuinely could not _believe_ someone so crude, terrible and psychotic had suddenly invaded his life.

"In the car," he said, curtly, letting Jamie go ahead while he returned, briefly, to  the kitchen. Mary's letter lay beside its envelope. Blue paper, blue ink. Her married name on the reverse of the envelope flap.

\----

"I can't _believe_ you just ordered coffee. I suppose over there, you went to some appalling, stereo-lit _java_ house."

"There is no need," said Douglas, contentedly, "to bad-mouth coffee. It's only that the English --"

"'The English'!"

"Fine, _we_ don't make it properly. Though I'm willing to give old P.V. a chance, in pursuit of a decent cup." He touched Julius's hand, across the table. "Come on, old boy, don't _fuss_."

"Actually, Douglas, I'm not _fussing_ , I'm _deploring_ your astronomic corruption, the - the _ludicrous_ streaks in your previously respectable _hair_ ," Despite his profound reservations, Julius accepted the proffered fingers and twined them with his own, "and, above all, the introduction in your previously respectable conversation of _trans-Atlantic drift_. Oh, good, breakfast." Over Douglas's (beloved, miraculous) shoulder, he'd spotted a waiter with multiple plates. Hot buttered toast, jam, eggs Benedict royale (to be eating eggs Benedict with sun at the windows - it was rather a Berkeley Square moment), and - a personal, triumphal indulgence - a small ( _very small_ ) plate of good shortbread biscuits.

It was set down at his elbow. Douglas repressed the deplorable urge to snigger.  "Oh good," he said, blandly, trying to keep the smirk from his face. "Cookies."

\----

He was not a sentimental man and he was not stupid enough to pick the letter up and kiss it. But he did hold it for a moment, tightly, before dropping it into the lidded bin.

It was a temporary gesture, a pretense he wouldn't answer. And an uncharacteristic concession to Jamie, waiting in the car. Malcolm peered out of the window for a second, before locking up, a final bitter swig of coffee, and heading out. Jamie was already on the phone and scheming, pausing to bring Malcolm up to date with a hand cupped over the mouthpiece that entirely failed to muffle 'cunt at the Treasury, immigration figures, brain like a big wrinkly _teabag_ '. Malcolm rolled his eyes, picked up the papers.

"Jesus Christ, would you look at _that_?"

" - just start praying, dickface, I'll be along in a second to stape your scrotum to the Right Honourable _wall_. Boss?"  Malcolm, the colour of curdled ice and his eyes fathomless with horror, passed across the front page of a leading tabloid newspaper. Jamie rubbed his chin.

"Fucking _Abbot_? Jesus Christ. _Two_ mistresses? The dirty bastard, does he nae think of the -- what's the plan?"

"Tell Eachann to get the address and start going through her bins. Get on to that crazy bitch at Murdoch - isn't Josef some sort of a fucking _relative_? - and tell them I'm going over at lunch. Then go round to the Salmon Farm and put the fear of God in Glenn Cullen. I'll deal with Hugh."

"Is it no' worth speaking to the BBC, they'll probably - "

"I've already thought of that, you minute bag of _roadkill_. What d'ye think I'm _doing_ this morning, drawing tiny hearts round a photofit of your ugly mug? You can have ITN and Channel 4 - aye, and Channel 5, if y'can step over the porn films..."

"...checked with Wonky Don at ESU, he says - yes, the _fuckin_ ' union, you fuckin' _fascist_ , some of us havenae forgotten - Hugh's broken cover for Borough House, going to throw himself on the mercy of..."

"...I'll deal with Hugh, just get those negatives burned - fuck me, talking of negatives, tell Sam to - _Sam_ , the _PA_ , Christ - go through the files and see if we have _anything_ about the Opposition, anyone booking their mistress in for a little polish and scrape of the _vagina dentata_ \- what about Mannion - y'do fuckin' know, looks like a fuckin' teddy bear on a rained-off children's ward - then go round to _Health_ and give them the fuckin' lines - get _off_ \- fine - just make sure _everybody_ knows their _lines_..."

  


**END**

  
1So Malcolm, hilariously, _thinks_.

2Claire, during their marriage, had been keen on _Changing Rooms_.

3In the Macdonald children's cases, the aforementioned marks were devious charm, intuition, tiny feet (oldest to youngest), eyes like a sad, abandoned bush-baby (Nellie), a will of steel and the propensity for really _legendary_ tantrums (all three).

4Obviously, this not, and _never would be_ , a _literal_ instruction. Warned ahead of time, Jamie would run amok with a shotgun; informed belatedly, and Jamie's revenge would rend heaven and go down on Cal Richards.


End file.
